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

Mr TIM WILSON (Goldstein) (18:59): As some of the members opposite like to taunt, on such important subject matter, indeed it is an opportunity to talk about this legislation and the consistency around making sure that we protect children—something that's core to the Liberal mission—while also supporting people's freedom to choose, to be informed and to make conscious and responsible decisions for themselves.

So I always welcome the taunting of Labor members, who don't understand liberalism and don't understand the foundations of a free society because, at every point, their objective, sadly, seems to be to directly assault it and violate it. It's a common story on a Saturday night for a parent—let's say, a mum—to be sitting on the couch with their son or daughter.

Of course, they're often watching sport—and, hopefully, it's the Demons flogging Collingwood, or, at least, how they flogged Freo last Sunday afternoon! The suspense builds. It's the third quarter, with maybe five or six points in the game, and mum is watching the game, but she's also watching her son, because she wants to know what he is watching.

Is he someone focused on the sport, and believing in physical prowess and human achievement and what can be done, or is the son watching the odds and his phone, to be kept abreast of whether the betting odds are in his favour? Now, mum isn't a wowser—in my electorate, and, frankly, most of the electorates around the country. She is not asking this parliament to run her household.

She just wants one thing: a fair chance to raise her son, before someone else starts doing it for her. Now let's be very clear about who the villain in this story is. It's not a bloke putting 20 bucks on at the track.

I can tell you, that's me; I like a flutter, and I suspect a lot of other members do, too. It's a good industry. People enjoy it, and they should be free to choose it.

In fact, the Goldstein electorate has one of the largest shares, I understand, of VRC and MRC members in Melbourne, and we're very proud of that. Nor is gambling the enemy. The villain is a machine that tries to take advantage of children and the vulnerable—a sophisticated, billion-dollar marketing operation, with a commercial interest in reaching the children of Australia, or in going after those who are addicts and leaving their lives as human wreckage.

Let's also be clear about this. Not all gambling companies—or gaming companies, or however we want to talk about them—behave that way, necessarily, and it may not even sometimes be, I acknowledge, their intent. But it does not change the fact that there is predatory behaviour, and there's a point at which we have to make sure not just that we empower citizens to make responsible decisions for their own lives, but also where there is room for legal protection.

Getting that balance right matters enormously, because the problem is not that adults bet; the problem is that gambling has stopped being incidental to sport and started to become the architecture through which young Australians understand sport. That is the problem in our community. And here, of course, is the problem that parents feel.

They feel outgunned—because they are. No family on any street in Goldstein, or anywhere else, can compete with the marketing budget or the sophistication of commercial operators, to influence the behaviour of their children and, sometimes, of parents themselves. That, by the way, isn't just limited to gambling.

My starting position is not to think the answer is always to censor or to silence. People being able to express their view is something I hold very dearly. But it doesn't change the fact that sometimes it can be wrong.

Believing in freedom, and believing in adults' freedom to choose and make responsible decisions, I think, is central to not just a free society but the type of country we should want to be. If people cannot be free to make decisions for themselves and take responsibility, there is no learning or growth. But freedom depends on people having a genuine sense of agency and control, and the same rules that apply to adults simply do not apply to children.

Children should not be treated or approached as prospective customers. Parents should not have to compete with a machine that seeks to normalise gambling as part of sport because their sons or their daughters are not old enough to understand it. I hear this in our community all the time, particularly from parents, who can see the convergence that takes place between sports, phones, social media, influencers and gambling all occupying the same cultural space of our nation.

They're concerned about it, and they ask simple questions, like, 'Why is it so hard for a child to simply watch sport without being sold a bet?' Frankly, for a lot of us, I suspect the answer is, 'Why can't any of us do that?' One constituent, Dale Hardy, has written to me previously about his concerns—legitimate ones, I think—around gambling advertising on public broadcaster SBS.

The parliamentary library says the evidence shows gambling advertising contributes to individual and social harm—but we all know that, because we know the human consequences—and, of course, there has been an inquiry that has established exactly those points. But I don't start where that inquiry landed; I start here. Adults should be free.

Children should not be cultivated, and adults who do not want this stuff can ultimately choose to avoid it. These three things can fundamentally coexist because we know the costs and the harm of what happens when they aren't honoured. The cost is human: decline in people's households, addiction, kitchen tables filled with people for dinner but no meals.

But my support for this bill is conditional—as it is, I know, for many people. We step into this space with trepidation. We want to both get the balance right but also, frankly, call on the Prime Minister to work with the opposition to get a mutually agreeable outcome.

I say that from a very low position of trust. The Prime Minister has consistently demonstrated he will put politics above substance or outcomes for the Australian people. The Prime Minister has become an untrustworthy partner in advancing our national interest.

So, at any point, we'll reserve the right to vote against components of this legislation, or the legislation itself in different stages, if we don't get to some sort of agreement where the Prime Minister puts the national interest first. Our focus must be on getting the law right, because a good liberal proposition is not built around maximising regulation, and it's certainly not about empowering the state needlessly.

It's about putting responsibility in the right place. The gambler's responsibility is to make informed choices. The wagering companies' responsibility is to obey the law and not exploit the vulnerable.

The broadcasters' and the platforms' responsibility is to respect the protections that this parliament legislates. The parents' responsibility is to guide and develop their children. The government's responsibility is not to replace any one of those actors but to set fair rules where individual freedom cannot do the job alone.

Failure with this bill is not it being defeated; failure is a press conference declaring the problem solved but leaving behind a trail of human wreckage. Failure is obligations no-one can practically comply with, where we see illegal offshore operators strengthened by their own handiwork and they become the new predators. We should be very conscious of this, because we have watched the absolute failure under this government and successive governments in their attempts to stamp out the illegal tobacco trade.

In fact the government, through its bad legislation, bad policy, arrogance and hubris has not just fed it; it's cultivated it and been complicit in the destruction of small businesses and the tax base from cigarettes, and it has led to the most ridiculous outcome, where the government through its own arrogance and pride, will not even acknowledge Australia has a problem while they have handed the law and the supply chain networks of an addictive product to organised crime.

The automatic position that the more you do automatically ends with a better outcome has absolutely been tested by this government. They've pushed past the Laffer curve, and now they're actively complicit in the firebombing of small business. Failure is seeing a replication of those standards once again.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Boyce ): If you resume your seat, please, Member for Goldstein. The minister on a point of order? Mr Thistlethwaite: The assertion that members of the government are actively complicit in the firebombing of businesses is way over the top, and the member should consider withdrawing that comment.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Would the member for Goldstein assist by withdrawing that comment? Mr TIM WILSON: I have considered the comment, and I'll proceed, because, at the end of the day, we have a government that does not understand the consequences of their legislation or their legislative agenda. I have to say to the Prime Minister—as I said, he sees every piece of legislation through the lens of politics—can he please not do that for once?

It will go against every fibre of his being and his character. I'm waiting to see the amendments, and, if he returns to his old games, we will of course exercise our rights too. Success looks very different.

Success is in the final quarter where there's six points in it. Hopefully the Dees are flogging Collingwood, and hopefully it's the flag this year! But the children of our nation are thinking about the tackle not the odds, not because the government is wrapping people in cotton wool, but because a child is free to love sport for the contest on the field, and I support that proposition.

My hope is that we get the balance right. Australians expect us to get it right, and that is reform worth getting right.