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 DAVID POCOCK (Australian Capital Territory—Independent ACT Whip) (19:13): But, Minister, targeting illegal offshore gambling, which is illegal and should be targeted, is very different to the Prime Minister of this country getting up and saying, 'If we stop gambling ads, if we stop your kids seeing gambling ads, people are going to go to illegal offshore operators.' There's just no evidence for that.

The Albanese government is just parroting the line from industry. And for extra measure—because we heard this during the Senate inquiry, obviously from the gambling companies—I asked Curtin University to fact-check the illegal offshore gambling claims made by Responsible Wagering Australia and passed on to the Australian people on our national broadcaster by the Prime Minister.

Here's what they said: 'None of the witnesses disclosed that the H2 Gambling Capital research was commissioned by Responsible Wagering Australia itself. The central argument of the industry case was presented to the committee as independent market monitoring when it was actually research paid for by the industry peak body—with no methodology—before the inquiry.

The French and Polish studies relied on in RWA's submission concern illegal online casino markets, a product class already prohibited in Australia. In one case, in a country that prohibits online casinos entirely—and the UN figure is a global estimate of illegal betting that says nothing about the marginal effect of Australian advertising settings—on H2's own timeline, the offshore market doubled between 2019 and 2024, a period of saturation advertising in Australia.' Peak gambling ads—if Aussies think back to 2019 to 2024, that is when gambling ads hit the roof.

That's when I think Aussies just had a gutful. We were seeing them everywhere. It was during that time that, according to this research, it doubled.

I'll go back and quote: 'Advertising is demonstrably not what contains the offshore market; enforcement is.' So, sure, crack down—enforce them. But this comes to the denial then delay that we've seen from the Albanese government and, ultimately, lands on what experts say and what I think the community says and what a handful of senators will say are ineffective reforms.

I understand that most in the major parties think that this is a great thing for the country. I'm wondering if you can put on the record whether it is still the government's view, the Prime Minister's view, that implementing the Murphy report would cause people to shift to the illegal offshore market.