Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Small Business, Deregulation, Competition Policy and Sustainable Cities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to raise a concern that many Australians share about the prevalence of gambling. I would particularly like to draw attention to the Productivity Commission’s report about gambling in Australia—a number of its recommendations—and the incredible hypocrisy of some federal Labor members to call upon state governments to take action. There is no question that there is a need for state and territory governments to be active and engaged on this topic, but what is not so well-appreciated in this parliament is that the federal Labor government could take action if it chose to.

The Rudd Labor government has chosen not to lift a finger on one of the fastest growing and most troubling areas of gambling—interactive online gambling. It falls right within the jurisdiction of the federal parliament. There is legislation already available where action could be authorised. Instead, while the Prime Minister runs around claiming there is a war on gambling, he will not lift a finger to take any action whatsoever about a pervasive and insidious form of gambling taking hold of communities and households around our country—over which he has a full opportunity to influence.

He will not take that responsibility. It is completely within the Commonwealth’s jurisdiction. I call on the Rudd Labor government tonight to stop talking about a war on gambling and to call off the federal Labor members of parliament who think that their job is to go around jaw-boning and gobbing off at state and territory governments to do all they should, and actually turn their minds to where they are responsible—and that is the area of interactive gambling.

There was some work done in this chamber, back in 2008 when I introduced a private member’s bill, that drew attention to this opportunity, in which international analysis of gambling investment opportunities pointed squarely to interactive online gambling. We have the growth of this activity in our country. It is an activity that is bringing many students in United States universities to their knees: where they can all get around some technology, have all the sounds, sights and stimuli of race day, and gamble to their heart’s content. They can consume alcohol. They can do this in their own homes. They can lose their own home without leaving it and lose their shirt without even having to put one on.

This is the reality of gambling. It is a growth area that we should tackle now. Instead of going around putting out big statements about what everyone else should be doing, the Rudd Labor government should do what it is able to do, what it is responsible for and what is right within its jurisdiction. There are technologies around that could possibly open the way for conditional approval of this activity but with some of the safeguards that are so regularly talked about in poker venues.

These poker machine venues—and I must declare a picayune interest—bore me witless; but for those people who get pleasure out of them they are a part of the social fabric of many communities. But they are incredibly supervised. They are in venues where there are dress codes. They are in locations where your activity is observed. They have got restrictions on alcohol consumption. There are even now further measures on how you can update your access to cash, the size of the bets you can place, the amounts you can lose and the constraints you can impose on your own behaviour in a venue that is public with all of those accountabilities and checks and balances.

Yet debate in this parliament from Labor members focuses more on that heavily regulated, highly observed and highly supervised form of gambling. But it blissfully and conveniently ignores this insidious form of gambling that is in your home, away from any observation, away from any constraints on how your update through EFTPOS the funds that you are gambling, no limit on the technology use in terms of the value of the wagering, the cost of your betting session, the frequency with which it is updated, no caution or concern about losses that might be recorded and no-one there checking to make sure you are not incredibly inebriated while you pour enormous amounts of money into this technology.

Why is this such a blind spot? Why won’t the federal Labor government and Prime Minister Rudd, if he has got a skerrick of genuine concern and a slither of authentic belief that gambling is a problem, lift a finger? Why will he not lift a finger to tackle an area of gambling that is one of the fastest growth areas over which the Commonwealth has complete jurisdiction? Conveniently, and I think incredibly disappointingly, the Rudd Labor government just turns its back completely on this area.

I urge people to turn their minds to this opportunity. I invite the government to pick up my private member’s bill from 2008. I encourage the Labor members opposite to stop telling everyone else what they should be doing, to look to themselves and their responsibilities as federal legislators and to urge the Prime Minister to take action. He talks a great game about this but does absolutely nothing in an area that is completely within his court. If he is serious the Prime Minister should tackle and seek to regulate interactive gambling with all the checks and safeguards that are imposed on other forms of gambling. (Time expired)