Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026, National Self-exclusion Register (Cost Recovery Levy) Amendment Bill 2026

Ms CLUTTERHAM (Sturt) (11:43): I rise today to speak in support of the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026. It was not until my mid-30s that I realised just how addictive, how harmful and how toxic online gambling could be. I'm a sports lover.

I love most sports—except for those involving animals, which I cannot stand. Sports are for me, and I wish I had been good enough to play sport at a truly elite level. I was a pretty good swimmer but not really elite, and B-grade netball was the highest standard I ever achieved.

I've often wondered what it would be like to play sport in front of a crowd and get paid handsomely to do it or to play sport for Australia, to represent Australia on the global stage, at a world championship, Olympic Games or Commonwealth Games, and to hear the roar of the crowd as you shoot that winning goal for the Australian Diamonds or touch the finish line ahead of the US in the 4 x 200 metre freestyle relay or slot the Sherrin between the goalposts for that after-the-siren win.

That is the dream. This love of sport led me to say yes to joining an online betting group made up of friends of friends of friends called the Gentleman's Gambling Guild, or the GGG, about 10 years ago. You didn't have to be a gentleman to join.

All you had to do was pay a sum of money to enter the competition, and you had to open a Sportsbet account. Then the rules were simple. For the duration of the AFL footy season, including finals, each week you'd place a $1 bet on whatever you liked—Crows to beat Port, the Adelaide Thunderbirds to beat the Melbourne Vixens, Buddy Franklin to kick six goals.

You name it, you could bet on it, but you were limited to $1. You could also place a $10 long-range bet—that is, bet on something at the start of the season in the hope it might transpire by the end of the season. My biggest failed bet was that, in 2017, I bet that Sydney Swan Isaac Heeney, still one of the best midfielders in the AFL, would win the Brownlow that year.

I didn't realise he'd been diagnosed with a severe bout of glandular fever and wouldn't be playing that much, so that bet was a fail. The merciless and frankly justified ribbing I received from my fellow competitors in the GGG was very humbling, to say the least. But, depending on how your bet went and how successful you were each week, you'd be placed on a weekly leaderboard.

Multis—maybe a four-leg or a six-leg multi—would see you place higher on the leaderboard, meaning there is more incentive to place riskier and more complex bets, just in case they came off. At the end of the season, you could win prize money depending on where you were on that leaderboard. I was never any good.

I was always quite confused about what the line bet actually meant, and my enduring love for the mighty Adelaide Crows during a couple of their less successful seasons meant I was never really a serious threat of winning any prize money. So being part of the GGG and placing $1 bets was just a bit of harmless fun—until it wasn't. It became less and less fun.

It was $1 a week, so I was never really in danger of suffering financially from placing these bets. I consider myself to be a reasonably smart woman, although I accept there'll be differing views on this, but I thought I'd be smart enough not to be affected by placing $1 bets. It's $1—so what?

But, for me, I very quickly became obsessed with what was happening with my bet. A six-leg multi meant the entire weekend could be consumed by obsessively watching matches and checking scores, impatiently waiting for the results to see if my bet came up. A lost bet on a Friday night footy match would mean waking up in a bad mood on a Saturday or wishing failure for my competitors in the GGG leaderboard.

And then I started to casually, ever so casually, top up my Sportsbet account with small amounts here and there because I was actually starting to become addicted to the thrill of the win, the smugness of knowing that you predicted the outcome of a match, the smugness of knowing your bet had paid out and that you were a sporting oracle with a higher balance in your Sportsbet account—money you'd done nothing intelligent to earn.

It's easy to top up your account. You just link your savings account and press a button, and the funds magically appear, ready to be gambled away. Eventually I stopped.

I was fortunate that it dawned on me that it was actually a huge waste of my time and energy and pretty stupid to be getting angry over the failure of a $1 bet, and then the GGG eventually folded. No-one could be bothered administering it anymore, and that was that. I haven't placed a bet since.

I'm not interested. I know that for me sport is way more enjoyable when I just watch it for the sheer spectacle of it. But, when I look back, I see in myself those fleeting signs of possible addiction. 'Just one more—then I'll stop.' Then you place another, but, 'This is the last bet I'm ever going to make.' But then the bet pays out, and so you place just one more, telling yourself, 'It's only 50 bucks.' Then $50 becomes $100, and it builds and goes beyond.

Although you might win some, eventually, you lose more. Online gambling is addictive by design. It plays on human nature: the innate desire to win, to make money, to be in control of something, to be good at something and—particularly for me, on my multibets—to take a bit of a risk.

Online gambling plays on the camaraderie that having a drink with your mates in the pub whilst watching sport can bring. It's easy—again, by design—set up an account, link your savings and away you go. Not everyone succumbs to the addiction.

Plenty of Australians have a flutter with very little consequence. But, for those who do succumb, the addiction can be devastating: irreversible financial devastation, the loss of employment, the breakdown of family relationships, increased drinking, drugs, violence, self-harm or suicide. We need to talk about addiction, to remove the stigma associated with an addiction to online gambling, so people feel comfortable reaching out for support.

Addiction is a chronic health condition when someone just cannot stop doing something, even though it hurts their family, their health, their work and themselves. Addiction is real, and talking and listening—starting a gentle conversation, expressing concern without judgement and letting someone know you're there to help—can make a difference. Trying to understand addiction and offering support, not criticism, can make a big difference in someone's journey from addiction to recovery.

We know that governments also have a role to play in providing safeguards that minimise potential for harmful addiction, particularly with respect to children. The sooner the connection between sport and gambling is broken, the better. That is what this bill is aimed at.

It aims at achieving this through a ban on wagering advertising content during live coverage of sporting events across all platforms, a ban on radio advertising during school drop-off and pick-up times, and limits on the frequency of advertising on television. Kids don't need to see or hear gambling advertisements. Adults don't really need to see them either—they wreck sport, they are intrusive, they are unintelligent, they feed existing addictions and they provide the foundations for new ones.

In addition, the bill includes a prohibition on displaying wagering advertising content on sporting uniforms and at sporting venues; a prohibition on the sporting heroes of our kids, along with celebrities and influencers, being used to promote wagering advertising content; and a prohibition on the broadcast of the promotion of those addictive odds. The bill also obliges all authorised deposit-taking institutions, such as banks and credit unions, and participants in a payment system to block funds transfers and payments from Australian accounts to accounts belonging to, or associated with, designated interactive gambling service operators.

It obliges digital services to block access to designated interactive gambling services online. It includes prohibitions on online Keno and foreign matched lotteries. Importantly, it strengthens BetStop, the National Self-Exclusion Register, by prohibiting licensed interactive wagering service providers from contacting individuals while they are on BetStop.

The statutory review into BetStop illustrated that BetStop works. It works; we know this. It works and it is effective.

We need to give it the significant publicity it deserves. We need to encourage more people, without stigma and without shame, to sign up to it. Only one in four Australians know about BetStop.

This figure needs to be four in four, because it works. This bill is not the set-and-forget one-size-fits-all solution to the harms caused by online gambling. I support this bill because it is progress.

It is progress, and it builds on the previous work this government has done in relation to minimising the harms caused by online gambling. At this moment, let's not let perfection get in the way of progress, even if that progress is not considered fast enough or strong enough for some. It is still progress.

Let this bill represent both the continuation of work done and the beginning of further meaningful and effective progress. I commend the bill to the House.