QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS

Senator WATERS (Queensland—Leader of the Australian Greens) (15:23): I move: That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Wong) to a question without notice I asked today relating to gambling regulation. In the three years since the Murphy report was released, Australians have lost $104 billion to gambling. That's an average of $666 million each week.

Now, the Prime Minister is at pains to tell us that Australians love a punt, but they have also made it abundantly clear that they don't love being pummelled by gambling advertising and inducements to bet more and more often. Four in five Australians support a total ban on gambling advertising, including on TV, on radio and online. And why wouldn't they?

Anyone watching the recent World Cup can attest to the sheer volume and constancy of gambling ads throughout every match. People deserve to be able to watch sport without being bombarded by gambling ads. But it's not just sport.

We heard evidence at the inquiry last week that kids are hearing Sportsbet ads between Disney songs on their parents' Spotify accounts, yet, three years since the Murphy report, this pathetic bill, which ignores most of those Murphy recommendations, is the best the Prime Minister can offer. The Prime Minister defends his reforms as 'striking the right balance'.

Well, who would want to balance gambling corporation profits against people's lives? It is deeply disturbing but perhaps not surprising when you look at the vast donations that the gambling industry makes to the major political parties. In the last five years, companies like Sportsbet, Tabcorp and the AHA have given the Labor Party $4 million.

Those same big gambling corporations also donated more than $2 million to the coalition. They're having a bet each way to stop this parliament doing anything that gets in the way of their profits. And people are not just losing money to online gambling; they're losing their lives.

Young people aged 18 to 24 were nearly twice as likely to be at high risk of harm compared to other age groups. This is also the group that's most aggressively targeted by gambling ads, particularly online. We know that gambling addiction can lead to suicide and we know that it can exacerbate domestic and family violence.

To reduce gambling related suicides and family violence, we need to see real policy change. The Murphy report was clear: Gambling advertising is grooming children and young people to gamble and encourages riskier behaviour. The torrent of advertising is inescapable.

It is manipulating an impressionable and vulnerable audience to gamble online. And yet, more than three years after that landmark report, the Albanese government is still refusing to take meaningful action against the scourge of gambling ads. The data says, 'End gambling ads.' The public says, 'End gambling ads.' The parliamentary inquiries say, 'End gambling ads.' But the gambling industry says no, and the Prime Minister falls into line.

Today, we're hearing that Labor's planning to do a dodgy deal with the Liberals to save their weak gambling legislation. Their proposed gambling reforms are in tatters, and it says everything that they're relying on their gambling industry mates in the Liberal Party to swoop in and save it. Anyone watching the hearings into this weak bill knows that it fails the most basic tests.

It's littered with loopholes and carve outs, rendering it weaker than the status quo in many areas. It fails to create a national gambling regulator. It leaves predatory online advertising largely untouched.

It relies on an opt-out model for streaming instead of putting people in control with opt-in protections. As drafted, the bill does absolutely nothing to rein in inducements, which get targeted at people with a gambling addiction. Now, the deals with the Liberals might address that predatory grooming with inducements, but we know it doesn't fix any of those other gaping holes in the bill, which the gambling industry will continue to exploit.

Last week's inquiry showed how much work is needed on this bill and showed just how far away this bill is from what the Murphy report recommended. Rushing through a dodgy deal with the Liberals would be a massive favour to the gambling corporations who are ripping off Australians, and it would be a massive kick in the teeth for anyone who's been working and fighting for so long for commonsense gambling reform that puts people ahead of the profits of gambling corporations.

Question agreed to.