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

Mr BIRRELL (Nicholls) (09:44): I too rise to speak on the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026. I was one of a group of members of this parliament who signed an open letter to the Prime Minister, along with former prime minister Howard and retired state premiers. In that letter, the signatories and I were asking him, the Prime Minister, to go further on gambling reform than the package he had originally announced.

I did not sign that letter lightly. It came through frustration that this issue had been left to fester and that what was being proposed was manifestly inadequate. Members from across this chamber, the government, opposition, crossbench—in listening to their speeches, I feel that they've reached the same conclusion independently about the same set of problems.

That should tell the government something. I hope it's one of those times when the leaders of the government listen to their backbench, listen to the concerns and negotiate in good faith to get something that's actually meaningful. I didn't appreciate the statement from the Prime Minister at the end of question time: 'Take it or leave it.

If you don't like it, we can go on with a status quo.' That's not how you deal with these issues. I set a test myself on these issues, and I want to talk about it a bit to share my decision-making. I judge any bill on whether it protects children and whether it stops predatory conduct aimed at people who are already in trouble.

I also look at what we decide as a parliament is legal and what people tell us has safe levels of use. I'm going to talk about tobacco, alcohol and gambling. All the evidence is that there is no safe use of tobacco.

We continue to make it legal. We have a regulatory regime that has pushed a lot of the use into illegal products, and that is creating its own set of problems. I think we've got a lot of issues—and I see them all the time in my home state of Victoria—with the fact that our efforts to regulate that have gone so far that it's pushed use into illegal forms.

But, having said that, there is no safe use of tobacco. It is legal, but there's no safe use. So there should be no advertising.

I'm comfortable with that. We discussed alcohol yesterday with the minister, the wine industry, the brewing industry and the spirits industry. Many Australians enjoy alcohol responsibly.

Medical experts tell us there is a safe level of use for that product, so we allow some advertising of that product. We try to stop it being targeted at children because there is no safe use for children. Ms Bell: Or pregnant mothers.

Mr BIRRELL: Or pregnant mothers. Thank you, member for Moncrieff. When it comes to gambling, there is a safe level of use.

Many people enjoy the occasional bet. Many people enjoy more than the occasional bet with money that they can afford to lose, knowing when to stop and understanding the loss probability. It's not something I do very often, just around the spring carnival and at country races.

Normally, my inadequacy in punting warns me off for another year, but it is fun. I don't think this bill as introduced passes the test that we want for having some advertising but making sure we protect vulnerable people and children. We're three years on from the Peta Murphy report.

In June 2023, a committee of this parliament handed down 31 recommendations, and it was bipartisan. Members from both sides put their names to those recommendations. As many people have said, this parliament should be incredibly proud of Peta Murphy for what she did in this place and everyone misses her.

I want to appreciate the work of the deputy chair of that committee—the member for Cowper, Pat Conaghan—who also contributed greatly. I am very critical of the government for the delay in acting on elements of that report. I think more than three years passing between that report and a bill is not acceptable—three years in which ads kept running, losses kept climbing and children kept being exposed to gambling advertising.

When the government did finally respond to the Murphy report, it did so on budget day, with the Press Gallery locked away in a budget lock-up. I think that it should have had more fanfare and should have had more transparency and should have been worked through more than that. The issue, as many members of this place have said, is that we love enjoying sport with our children, and it's something that I do.

It's something that many people do. It's a way of bonding. It's a way of talking about athleticism, teamwork and all sorts of things.

With me, it's more soccer than anything else, particularly the Premier League. When you're watching a game, whether it be AFL, NRL, Premier League or A-League, you don't want to have that experience inundated with gambling ads and discussion of odds. I think that most people have reached the conclusion that there's just been an overload of gambling ads during sports broadcasts.

During the last parliament, when I was sitting on the backbench here, Peter Dutton, the former opposition leader, stood at this dispatch box and gave a budget reply speech that proposed a reform of an ad ban an hour before, during and an hour after live sports broadcast. Again, I think that was the then leader of the opposition expressing a frustration that the government was so recalcitrant to do something and that we needed to put something on the table to say that we need to do something about this and that we need to get these gambling ads out of our live sport.

I think that was a worthwhile reform. I don't think it's the only thing that should have been done, but it's a worthwhile thing. I want to make a couple more points.

Firstly, on streaming services, there have been discussions of opt in and opt out, and that will continue to be a negotiation. I think opt in is a good system if it can be managed, but, if this parliament negotiates and decides for an opt-out situation for streaming, my strong view is that that opt out should be very, very clear and very, very easy to do. At the moment, it is not.

We found that during the World Cup with the SBS. If you wanted to opt out, it wasn't clear and it wasn't easy. You had to go to settings and you had to do a number of things, and, consequently, most people didn't do it.

Opt in is ideal. If it's opt out, it needs to be very, very clear, and streaming services need to make that opt-out option really, really clear. I do I just want to talk a bit about carve-outs for racing and that distinction.

There is a distinction between racing and the other sports that I've mentioned—rugby league, rugby union, soccer and Australian rules football. Horseracing and gambling are intertwined in a way that other sports aren't, and that has been the case for almost all of Australia's history, and I think we need to understand that. I've got a really strong, vibrant thoroughbred-racing industry.

I've also got pacing and greyhounds as well, but the thoroughbred-racing industry in my electorate, as many country MPs have—I know we talk about the Melbourne Cup and the spring racing carnival, and we talk about the carnivals in other metropolitan cities, but it really is and can be the lifeblood of many people in regional communities. I've got the Seymour Racing Club, the Echuca Racing Club and the Kilmore Racing Club in my electorate, to name a few.

We do need to make sure that what we do does not affect, firstly, free-to-air broadcasting of sport, because a lot of people can't afford the cable services, the pay TV, so they want to be able to watch sport on TV, and we can't have the unintended consequences of significantly damaging racing, particularly in regional areas. That's the balance that everyone's looking for here.

In an ideal world you'd go a lot further, but you recognise that things that you do, regulations that go too far, might adversely affect great industries like racing and people's ability to access sport via live free-to-air services. I'll leave my comments there. I'm disappointed it's taken this long to get a bill on the table.

I don't think the main bill is adequate. I believe the negotiations are ongoing, and I look forward to seeing what comes back. This parliament has a duty to do something about this, and the test it sets is: does what we do protect children and the most vulnerable people from obsessive gambling advertising and gambling advertising during sporting contests?