Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the member for Mackellar for bringing forward this matter of public importance. I'd like to take us back to the 1980s, when we all had really big hair. It was also a really important time in Australia, when we took the lead with respect to the advertising of tobacco products. In the early 1970s, Australians were smoking at record levels, tobacco advertising ran for eight to 14 minutes on Australian television, and 74 per cent of Australians really disliked cigarette advertising and wanted it banned. That took some time, but it was between 1973 and 1976 that we put in a ban and we phased out cigarette advertising on radio and television.

Between the 1980s and the year 2000, there were progressive bans on smoking in public and in the workplace. In fact, when I started work—this will show my age—in an office back in 1991, there were still secretaries with ashtrays on their desks. Of course, it took a lot longer for the senior partners to give up their cigars, but it happened. It happened. Since then, we have seen Australia take the lead with respect to plain packaging, point of sale and health warnings. But we're not seeing that level of progress on other harmful products, and I would like to talk about gambling advertising in particular.

With respect to tobacco, apart from the National Party and I think the Liberal Democrats, the major parties and Independents no longer accept political donations from the tobacco industry, but they certainly do still accept them from gambling organisations—and a very significant amount of money, too. According to democracyforsale.net, since 2012, between gambling, tobacco and alcohol, the Labor Party have accepted more than $8.7 million in donations; and the Liberal and National parties, over $10 million. So, really, when we're talking about addictions, I think we can certainly say that the political party system is addicted to the political donations that they receive from those three harmful product areas. We need to make a change.

We know that gambling is harmful. In Australia, we lose $25 billion every year. That figure is so outdated; it's from 2019. I'm quite sure that has potentially doubled. It is a huge loss for individuals and for communities. We know that gambling advertising is very much directed towards young people, it is harmful, and we in this place need to take the lead and stamp it out.

Apart from the individuals who are addicted, the major professional sports, particularly the AFL, take huge amounts of money from gambling organisations. It's said that a proportion of revenue generated from betting on a sport under commercial agreements entered into with licenced wagering service providers is paid to sports. How can those different sporting codes say that they are truly supporting the people who are their members? We need to do better in this place. I think this is an excellent MPI. I think that we need to have some very real conversations in this place about harm. We don't do enough. I think the first step would be to wean the major parties off the donations that they receive from these very obviously harmful industries.

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