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

Senator CADELL (New South Wales—Nationals Whip in the Senate) (12:12): It's interesting to rise to talk on the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 and to hear what is said on the other side. It's been an interesting thing for me as we've gone through this process, because what was presented by this government was clearly unacceptable in its original form.

I compliment Senator Henderson for undertaking this in a good way and talking with government about how it needed to be better, but we were coming from a position of weakness, where there was a 'if you don't like it, walk away with what we've got' mentality. Tightening up, to some extent, on what we've done has improved this bill. We know it's not perfect.

We know it'll never be perfect. There are people suffering every day. We heard those examples in the committee.

But, equally, people suffer from all of the things across our country, and, when they can't all be removed, they can't all be protected from themselves. That's a real sad thing in this. For me, when we talk of many things in this world—things like smoking, things like vaping and things like gambling—regulation has seen that we should do more and could do more yet often leads to perverse outcomes.

We've seen that with smoking now. The tax is there to encourage people not to smoke, to go out there not to buy cigarettes, but it's come to the point where we're now virtually responsible for a massive organised crime wave and profitability as they sell illegal tobacco on the market. We've seen vapes that are virtually illegal but for a prescription model that isn't working in this country fail.

People are now buying imported vapes from China that have no restrictions on what is in them, no restrictions on who they are sold to, and they are out there in the market. So I see the point that overregulation has failed to protect many Australians, and there needs to be some personal responsibility. I think this compromise goes a long way to getting that personal responsibility and putting that into the bill.

I think it is a good thing that we have done that. Of course, there will always be horror stories, as there are with any product or anything in the world. People can abuse many things, and hearing them was average.

So overall that is all I will say on the substantive motion, the bill, given the time. I know I have about 30 seconds to go before we go into continuation. But I will have more to say after this because I think there have been deals done.

I think the Greens are right—certainly there have been some deals done around how this has happened, not all of them good and not all of them positive. Most of them aren't. I think the government are protecting some of their mates and certainly punishing some people out there in the world, through how they've gone about this and how they've engaged.

And that does need to be brought out. When you are making things tighter because of Murphy and loosening things because of Murphy, that is not consistent. I'll talk more about that later.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Sharma ): It being 12.15, I'll now proceed to senators' statements. Senator Cadell, you will be in continuation.