Andrew Wilkie (Denison, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Franklin for that contribution. Through you, Mr Speaker, to the minister: I do not doubt the government's intention here and I do not doubt that they intend that there be no liberalisation. But I just offer one final comment: I do believe that when we make a law in this place it cannot rest on the goodwill of a particular minister or on the intentions of a particular government. I think we should write laws that almost assume some minister or government in the future will have a completely different point of view and perhaps no sense of the public interest. So I do find the current wording too loose. I do think that my very simple amendment would tighten that up and ensure that any future minister or any future government would be very tightly required in law to follow the intention of this minister and this government.

We need to be ever so careful to not rely on the goodwill of any one person. We might have a good minister now but, who knows, while the next minister might be the member for Franklin, we have no idea what the position of the minister after that might be or whether he or she might have an equally admirable understanding of this issue, and we do not in any way want to allow for the liberalisation of in-play betting. There is an abundance of evidence to say that it is problematic, an abundance of evidence from other countries to say it can allow for the corruption of sport. We must be very careful about ensuring we do not create the environment for that in the future. I will leave it at that.

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