Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

The government will not be supporting the amendment moved by the member for Banks in the proposal to remove paragraph 15C(4A)(d) of the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Credit and Other Measures) Bill 2023. When the honourable member has the time, he might want to read the Interactive Gambling Act and note the many other provisions in the act which give the minister discretion to do certain things that are subject to disallowance. When he has finished that, he might want to read the Telecommunications Act and see the same sorts of provisions, right across the sphere, in the communications space.

But I'm pleased that the member for Fisher has acknowledged that the government has picked up this 2021 report. It is important, because, quite frankly, people should not be betting with money that they do not have. That is the case for land based gambling and it should be the case with gambling online.

Section 15C(4A) of the bill lists the methods of payment that wagering providers would be prohibited from accepting under section 15C of the Interactive Gambling Act. These are credit cards; credit related products, like digital wallets; and digital currencies, such as cryptocurrency, and the provision that will be removed, through the member's amendment, a method determined by the minister by legislative instrument.

Subsection 15C(4A)(d) of the bill would provide the responsible minister with the power to nominate additional payment methods for prohibition, via disallowable instrument. So the notion that this is unfettered is completely wrong. It's a disallowable instrument that is subject to scrutiny. This provision is to make sure that this legislation is able to be responsive to future developments in credit card payment technologies and prevent them from being used to circumvent the bill. This is about closing those loopholes to prevent future harm.

Importantly, the department undertook targeted consultation on the bill in August, with banking and payment system and wagering and harm reduction stakeholders, as well as Commonwealth, state and territory officials. Stakeholders unanimously supported the bill. I want to be clear that no objections were raised in relation to the proposed minister's power under paragraph 15C(4A)(d).

As I said, the future legislative instrument will receive the normal disallowance scrutiny process to enable the parliament to have oversight of any new payment methods that would be proscribed. The government, along with stakeholders, recognises the importance of this power, in light of the rapidly changing payment, credit and wagering environment. The drafting of the legislative instrument is, as I said, also consistent with various other provisions in the Interactive Gambling Act. These provide the minister with discretionary power to determine certain conditions through legislative instrument, such as section 8A(4), excluded wagering services; section 9A(1), designated country; and section 10A, what is or is not a sporting event.

On 14 September, the Senate referred the bill to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 12 October. The committee's report did not raise any issues in respect of the paragraph raised by the member. In submissions to the inquiry, stakeholders—including Financial Counselling Australia, the Australian Gambling Research Centre, the Australian Institute of Family Studies and the Uniting Church of Australia Synod of Victoria and Tasmania—specifically mentioned their support for the provisions.

So I thank the member for bringing these amendments forward. We will not be supporting them.

See this speech in context