Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I just want to add my support to the amendments moved by Senator Ludlam and express my concern in terms of what the government is proposing. I am not suggesting that the government has rushed this or tried to sneak it through or anything like that, but the reality is that I have small office, a very hardworking office, and we are doing our very best to deal with every piece of legislation. This, too, is something that has slipped through the net.

The particular interest I have in this area relates to online gambling. My office gets complaints, not from just from South Australia but from around the country, in terms of complaints directed towards ACMA in respect of interactive gambling issues, where people have lost significant amounts of money—in some cases, their homes—because of the money they have lost in terms of online gambling. ACMA is often the only regulator that can assist in respect of that—or complaints about games that are targeting children that could be quite problematic in terms of future problem gambling behaviour.

My concern relates to the wording of the omnibus bill where it refers to 'desirable to do so'. What does the government say is the meaning of 'desirable to do so' and in what circumstances will that discretion be exercised? It seems to me that it is such a broad discretion that ACMA—perhaps through resource constraints, perhaps any other reasons or other priorities—can ignore matters that are clearly in the public interest, that are clearly of great personal interest for an individual that has lost a significant amount of money through online gambling. What safeguards are there in respect to that?

I note that the Leader of the Government, Senator Abetz, made reference to the Ombudsman having a say or an oversight role in respect of this. I do not pretend to be a better administrative lawyer than Senator Abetz by any standard, but my understanding is that, when it comes to dealing with administrative law matters, the Ombudsman's role is constrained based on the legislative framework. So if you have a legislative framework where there are so much more discretion for ACMA, there is less of a role, less chance for the Ombudsman to intervene, because there is such a broad discretion. The Ombudsman is there if there has been clearly a failure of process under the existing legislative framework. So these are my very real concerns expressed in the context of online gambling complaints that I get from my South Australians constituents and from people in the rest of the country who are concerned about this issue.