David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

What a sad little stunt this is. This has a real last-days-of-empire feeling to it. The government is getting desperate. It's getting hammered from basically all directions. So they think, 'Let's try to come up with some distractions so that people look over there.' Don't look at what this government is doing on a daily basis and the catastrophic failures that it is putting onto the Australian people. Don't look at that; look at various distractions! The government just moved a suspension of standing orders to say how urgent it is that we debate this matter right now. It's odd, then, that in the entire 2½ years since the election the Prime Minister has only mentioned the NBN in this parliament six times, which suggests that it wasn't an overly urgent issue in his mind until then.

It's also interesting, isn't it, when we think about other policy areas in the communications portfolio. You might have heard, Deputy Speaker, that there's been something of a debate about the regulation of gambling advertising in Australia. Many people listening or watching today would be aware that, for a very long time, this government has failed to act on the recommendations of the parliamentary inquiry into gambling advertising. In fact, that inquiry reported—what is it now?—some 16 or 17 months ago. And what have we heard from the government in response to this issue? It's been nothing at all. The only thing we hear from the government is that a response on gambling advertising is imminent. We will have to consult the Oxford dictionary. Perhaps the definition of the word 'imminent' has to change! If something is imminent but takes 16 or 17 months, then the dictionary must be kind of wrong! It is comical. So many people want clarity from the government on this issue of gambling advertising. Back in May 2023, the Leader of the Opposition stood at this dispatch box. You know what he did? He said something with commitment. He said that the coalition would ban gambling advertising from one hour before a live sporting event to one hour after. Why did he do that? He believes it's the right thing to do. He believes that gambling advertising is being integrated with sporting content in a way which is very bad for our nation. This is a very important point. In this portfolio, there is an atmosphere of indecision and malaise. We see it most comically in gambling advertising but we see it in other areas as well, of course. We see it in relation to the News Media Bargaining Code.

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