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

Ms CHANEY (Curtin) (12:34): I've spent a lot of time in this building talking about gambling reform. The Murphy review was the first inquiry that I participated in, and the personal stories were heartbreaking. I was really impressed by the committee process: the government identifying an issue that needed action; all sides working together, genuinely interested in understanding the issue and what needs to be done.

I contributed significantly to that inquiry, suggesting 45 recommendations that I thought should be addressed based on the evidence we heard, with 42 of them ending up in the final report. Now, in the more than three years since that piece of multipartisan work was tabled in this House with unanimous recommendations, I've continued to fight to keep this issue on the agenda and to hold the Prime Minister to account for his inaction and intransigence.

I've asked him questions nine times in question time. I've raised gambling on the floor of this House 250 times since I was elected. Then, like a slap in the face, the government issued its long-overdue response, merely noting the 31 recommendations and going on to talk about small actions that were not identified as priorities in that report.

The package that has been put forward is not fit for purpose. It will not address this problem. It's designed to give the government a handful of talking points.

It's about politics; it's not about lives. After four years of advocacy, I want to spend this time addressing three issues: firstly, why this reform is important for Australians; secondly, why the package being presented is woefully inadequate; and thirdly, why this reform is actually important for the government too. Firstly, why is it important for Australians?

Well, we have the statistics. We lose $31 billion a year, the most in the world, twice as much as Americans and New Zealanders. On average, Australian households lose more through gambling than they spend on electricity, gas and other fuels.

Half a million Australians have felt the need to ask their own banks to block them from gambling. Harm from an individual's gambling doesn't stop with that person. On average, six other people are directly affected when someone gambles at the highest risk level through the breakdown of relationships, financial and mental distress, and emotional and psychological impacts.

We are normalising gambling for children. It's illegal for anyone under 18 to gamble in Australia but it's not stopping them. It's not illegal to market gambling to them and there are few restrictions preventing it.

More 12 to 17-year-olds gamble than play soccer, basketball, netball, AFL, cricket or rugby. This is our blind spot. This is like guns in the United States.

Now, this reform is not, as the Prime Minister has suggested, about stopping someone from having a punt on a Saturday; this is about protecting Australians, particularly our kids, from gambling harms. So they are the statistics. And then there are the stories.

Since 2022, I have been contacted by more than 400 constituents in relation to excessive gambling advertising. I have heard heartbreaking stories from parents, family members, partners and former gambling addicts. I've really struggled to choose which stories to tell the House today about the scourge of addiction and the normalisation of gambling as part of sport because of the ever-present ads.

There were so many stories and they all have weight. I've heard from a woman whose nephew committed suicide in the face of gambling debts, and whose son is now struggling with a gambling addiction. He is trying so hard to get away from it, but she knows how hard he finds it when he's bombarded with ads everywhere he looks.

I've heard from a year-12 student whose teacher puts the class's weekend gambling wins and losses up on the whiteboard in their maths class. I've heard from a woman who's worked in the advertising industry on gambling ads and has seen how the algorithms are designed to maximise losses. Everyone who speaks to me about gambling shares a common message: stop the ads.

I want to quote two people who have been willing to tell their stories. The first says: Just over two years ago my son lost everything, including his wife and kids, all due to easy online gambling. He also tried to take his own life.

When I see these gambling ads constantly on TV, I literally either change the channel or close my eyes and block my ears. My son loves his football, so he constantly sees these ads thrown in his face as well. The second said: Over a period of 25-odd years I gambled away my family, a multitude of friends & other relationships, & my home, before I realised what I'd really done & what I was still doing.

Then, I nearly gambled away a second family before a close friend (with different addictions) helped me to realise that I was addicted to this 'pasttime'. Now, seeing the gambling adds shoved in my 12yo daughter's face every time we want to enjoy time watching our favourite teams playing, I nearly cry thinking how close I came to losing her, but I don't; instead we have discussions about how I (& many of my friends) fell for the marketing.

Now I want to talk about what's wrong with this package. The main issue here is the wagering advertising. The stated objectives, from the government, of the wagering advertising measures are, firstly, to break the connection between wagering and sport; secondly, to minimise the exposure of children and other vulnerable people to wagering advertising; and, thirdly, to reduce its saturation across the internet, radio and television.

I want to go through these three objectives and explain why they will not be achieved by this package. The bottom line is that partial bans don't work. We heard this in the inquiry.

The 2018 ad restrictions resulted in a 131 per cent increase in ads after 8.30 pm. They just move the ads around. The ads work, so gambling companies will be incredibly creative in finding any loopholes.

They've done it before and they will do it again. A phase-out of these ads is the only thing that makes sense. The government's own impact assessment was damning.

It showed that a full ban would not only be more effective; it would also be easier to implement and cheaper for taxpayers. All the tinkering around the edges in negotiated amendments between the government and the coalition will make no difference. We need to phase out the ads.

Looking at those three stated objectives: firstly, will this package break the connection between wagering and sport? No, it will not. Currently there are restrictions about showing gambling ads during live sport online, but they're are so ineffective that no-one really talks about them.

Under this package, on any streaming platform, there will actually be more ads allowed during scheduled and unscheduled breaks in sport, as long as there's an opt-out option—buried there, somewhere—on each separate platform. How can allowing more gambling ads during sports broadcast online, which is increasingly how people watch sport, be presented as breaking the connection between wagering and sport?

This package does nothing about establishing a national regulator. Gambling companies will continue to find loopholes. They'll seek the lowest-common-denominator regulation in the Northern Territory and find new ways to build that connection between gambling and sport.

The second question is: will it minimise the exposure of children and vulnerable people to wagering advertising? No. It allows three ads every hour, throughout the day, on TV.

So, if you sit down with the family to watch LEGO Masters or MasterChef, you'll see a gambling ad every 20 minutes. After 8.30 pm, ads are unlimited, yet 83 per cent of children aged 11 to 16 continue watching sport after 8.30 pm. The most vulnerable cohort of people we should be protecting here is people who are struggling with a gambling addiction.

This bill ignores the Murphy recommendation to ban inducements—or 'generosities', as the gambling companies chillingly call them. So the companies will keep bombarding vulnerable people with offers of free money. Quibbling about VIP flights and accommodation, as we've heard some of these amendments might do, is such a pathetic attempt to reduce inducements that it must have come from the gambling companies themselves.

The third question is: will it reduce saturation across the internet, radio and TV? No. The internet is providing an opt-out model.

The only evidence we have is that 0.12 per cent of SBS subscribers have found, and used, the opt-out option. That's about one in every 800 subscribers. That will not reduce saturation.

The government knew that statistic when it decided that this was the solution. It is completely dishonest, or at least disingenuous, to call this a 'triple lock', or to say that this will protect people, knowing that the best evidence that we have shows that a fraction of one per cent of people will find and use that option. At the very least it should be opt-in, so that the default option is no ads unless you specifically want them.

Then we have TV. No—there are still three ads an hour now. It must be pretty bad, now, if an ad every 20 minutes throughout the day is seen as a step forward.

And, after the magical time of 8.30 pm, the ads are unlimited. There is absolutely no evidence to support this piece of policy. The government was grilled on this in the Senate inquiry, and, in the very brief community consultation, the committee was told this was a political decision, not evidence based.

Why is this reform package important for the government? Well, the government has decided that this is not an issue that people are willing to change their vote over; people might not like the ads, but there are other things that matter more when it comes to voting. What they're missing is that this is the perfect case study for what people hate about today's politics.

Trust in politicians is appallingly low. Surveys show that more than half of all Australians believe that government is run for a few big interests. We're facing so many intractable problems: productivity; the cost of living; climate action; energy security.

Here is an issue with an easy answer: ban the ads—prioritise the public over the vested interests. But the government is listening to the power and the money, not the people. The gambling companies make significant political donations to both major parties.

The gambling industry lobbyists are everywhere in parliament: at Aussie's Cafe, playing basketball with MPs in the mornings, turning up at events, sponsoring the Australian Parliament Sports Club and walking the halls. It's disgusting. The sports codes are also deeply implicated.

The AFL and the NRL make about $50 million each from the gambling industry, through multiple revenue streams, and no government wants to be seen to be anti sport. The media companies—the ones that hardly ever cover this story—don't want to lose the gambling revenue. And the government isn't willing to take them on, because they write the stories about the government.

Without some serious improvements to this bill, this will confirm everything that the Australian public fears about how decisions are actually made. Even if polling shows that this isn't the No. 1 voting issue, it becomes an example of why the system is broken. People are turning away from the major parties because they want someone who will actually stand up for them.

I am so disappointed with this. I felt so optimistic, being part of the inquiry. I heard heartbreaking stories in that inquiry, and in my electorate, and I felt, 'Here is a problem that we can actually fix.' I've now seen the way lobbyists work, and I've seen who the government is listening to, and it leaves me feeling disgusted.

I move my second reading amendment to this bill: That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: "whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House: (1) notes that: (a) the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, in its unanimous report You Win Some, You Lose More, recommended a comprehensive phase out of online gambling advertising, the establishment of a national gambling regulator and a ban on inducements and inducement advertising; and (b) the Government has failed to deliver on these recommendations, and in doing so has chosen to favour the interests of gambling companies over the wellbeing of the Australian community; and (2) calls on the Government to implement a comprehensive phase-out of online gambling advertising, ban inducements to gamble, and establish a national regulator".

That amendment is to hold true to the recommendations of the Murphy report and go ahead with a full phase-out of all gambling ads and a ban on inducements, and to establish a national regulator. If the government had acted immediately after receiving the Murphy report, that phase-out of gambling ads would be done by now. I cannot support this bill in its current form because it is an insult to everyone who has bravely told their story to me, to the committee inquiry and to all the other people who sit in this House and in the other place.

I cannot support the bill in its current form because it is an insult to the memory of the late Peta Murphy, the chair of that inquiry, who cared so much about this issue and oversaw a unanimous report—supported by all sides of politics—for stronger reforms, before she passed away. I cannot support the bill in its current form because it lets the government off the hook and confirms our worst fears about how the government makes decisions.

The bill ignores the vast majority of the recommendations in the Murphy inquiry. It has no national regulator, no phase-out of gambling ads and no end to inducements. Its complexity is a joke.

Every member of this House should be thinking very carefully about how they vote on this bill, no matter their party's policy on voting discipline. We have all been sent here to represent our communities, not to represent vested interests and put our political party first. This decision needs to be about what is right for the Australian people, not what is right for the money and the power.

Each vote on this bill is each member's opportunity to make that choice. The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Ms Chesters ): Is the amendment seconded? Dr Scamps: I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.