Kerrynne Liddle (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Child Protection and the Prevention of Family Violence) Share this | Hansard source

The need to act is now. This bill, the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Ban on Gambling Advertisements During Live Sport) Bill 2023, is a start, and I hope the Greens will support it. A look at gambling statistics paints this frightening picture, but it is not a picture: there are real people, real lives, that are being affected. Australians have the largest per capita gambling losses in the world. It is everywhere and, conveniently, the gambling sector will come to you with 24/7 and mobile access, and it is there when you are watching your favourite game. TV advertising is particularly effective in grabbing the attention of young people. One report found one in five young women, 19 per cent, and one in seven young men, 15 per cent, started betting for the first time after seeing or hearing an ad on television.

Fellow South Australian Senator Hanson-Young raised important reasons to act now for my own home state. In South Australia, 40,000 locals engage in high- or moderate-risk gambling each year. That is enough people to fill the Adelaide Oval. Sixty-five per cent of South Australian adults gamble. In the 2021 financial year alone, the loss was a record $1.52 billion. The cost is a whopping $1,052 for every single South Australian adult every single year.

When gambling is a problem, it is because you have gambled more than you can afford, prioritised gambling over essentials or become secretive about your gambling to varying extents. It can be with devastating financial, human and social costs. The incidence of problem gambling and addiction is trending in completely the wrong direction.

I support the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Ban on Gambling Advertisements During Live Sport) Bill 2023 because it is a prevention approach to reduce exposure to risk. It places a ban on all gambling advertising during live sporting events, and it would begin one hour before the start of the match and finish one hour after the end of the match. It would apply to television, radio and live streaming. It's a start. It makes sure that sports enthusiasts who simply want to watch the game are not exposed to gambling. It protects children from being directly and indirectly exposed to gambling. Innocent and vulnerable children will benefit from this bill. Parents, grandparents and carers will benefit from this bill. This is about less exposure to temptation for gamblers and for everyone. Risky gambling affects debt; affects the health and wellbeing of individuals, families, children, and relationships; reduces performance at work and study; and causes cultural harm and even criminal activity.

Problem gambling is increasingly an addiction of the South Australian government. It secured a $120 million revenue windfall in 2020-21 from gambling. It is, of course, most likely that other states and territories are also reaping massive revenue windfalls. Alarmingly, only three per cent of South Australian gamblers seek help for gambling harm, and, when they do, it's most often when they've reached crisis point.

The Australian Institute of Family Studies alerts us to the association between child abuse and an increased risk of gambling problems in adulthood, according to a new systematic review published recently in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect. The association between child abuse and an increased risk of gambling problems in adulthood was significant for multiple forms of maltreatment, including physical abuse, sexual abuse, neglect and psychological maltreatment. The legislation will help protect our children. Also, evidence, though limited, regarding the extent to which adult problem gamblers are at risk of maltreating their children showed associations between problem gambling and the physical abuse of children.

Gambling rates are much higher among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples than in the wider Australian population, and we know their passion for sport means they are also vulnerable.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton said in his budget reply in May that we need to have this bill passed. The research tells us we must act on this bill. The ban would build on previous changes legislated by the former coalition government in 2018 to reduce the level of gambling advertising during sporting events. This necessarily goes further. Only last year, the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs began an inquiry into online gambling and its impacts on those experiencing gambling harm. In a submission to that inquiry, South Australia's Liquor and Gambling Commissioner, Dini Soulio, cited studies that indicate that exposure to gambling advertising contributes to the normalisation of gambling as complementary to the enjoyment of sport. That shouldn't be true. It is associated with an increase in gambling behaviour, including risky gambling behaviour, and it impacts children's perceptions and future intentions regarding gambling.

Now I'd like to alert you to advertising spend. Audience insights, data and analytics by Nielsen research shows the gambling industry spent $287 million on advertising in Australia in 2021, not including in-stadium advertising or sponsorships—so they spend much more. The opportunity to reach every single Australian is endless, through smartphones, apps, social media, traditional broadcasters and digital streaming outlets. There's no escape. We need to make sure there is.

For prime-time family viewing spots, Nielsen research found that an average of 148 gambling ads were broadcast on free-to-air TV between six and 8.30 every night—that's 148 gambling ads children could be exposed to. You only have to turn on an AFL football match to watch the Crows or Port Adelaide after 8.30 pm, and, at every opportunity, there will be a gambling advertisement. In his federal government inquiry submission, the South Australian liquor and gambling commissioner highlighted:

… Australian children aged between 8 -16 years found they could recall gambling advertising (for sports betting) in detail, had learnt how to place a bet, and could recall betting specific technical language.

I'm talking about children between eight and 16 years of age. I tested this. One of my own staff asked her son, a 14-year-old teen, what he knew. To her surprise, and to ours, even with that evidence, yes, he was able to rattle off a long list of gambling sites and advertising slogans without hesitation—he didn't miss a beat. There are also YouTube channels sponsored by gambling organisations that our children watch, and ads are streamed on digital platforms during television news. We cannot let this continue. Responsible parents who supervise their children cannot protect them alone. Parents and carers who are struggling need our help. Organisations that work to support problem gamblers need us to do the prevention work to slow the growing volume of problem gamblers that they need to help to rebuild their lives. All of them need our help. They need this legislation.

As was shown in a survey of 2,300 South Australian adults by researchers from CQUniversity in 2021, most adults, 92 per cent, believe it is important to speak to children about the risks involved in sports betting, but only one in five adults—that's 20 per cent—have actually done so. Evidence is important, but it's not needed to act here. We already have it. Delay in acting will delay the sector change and delay change for those that need it most. In talking directly to parents in South Australia since coming into this place, I know they would support this, and probably every single one of us in this place knows that, too. A three-year study from La Trobe University found that 78 per cent of the 50,000 respondents felt they should be able to watch sports on TV with no gambling ads. Families shouldn't have to think twice about turning on the television and watching tennis or any other sport because they worry about the exposure of their children to gambling. Instead, they should be focused on their favourite players, barracking for their team and watching the play, the fun stuff, as Senator Hanson-Young said, the family stuff.

Labor has done very little to clamp down on the gambling sector since its election other than an inquiry into online gambling and its impacts. Parents and carers will want this, and vulnerable children will benefit from it. I encourage those concerned about gambling to seek help and for the Senate to support this bill. A couple of weeks ago, it was reported that I went to Alice Springs, my home town. It was really sad to watch the number of people sitting around in Alice Springs gambling, and they'd been there all day. The kids were hanging around their parents, watching the gambling. Even worse, I took a walk through the casino, where there are heaps and heaps of photographs of people enjoying having a bit of a flutter, and a walk through the casino in Alice Springs shows you, without needing to be branded stereotyping people, many of those people can't afford to gamble that much and weren't working that day because they were spending welfare on gambling.

You only have to go to my home state and look at what has happened in Ceduna. I can't wait to see the statistics that show the increase in gambling with the abolition of the cashless debit card. I will certainly be continuing to look for those statistics. But, again, I don't need the evidence of another report to say, 'Act now.' You just need to listen, you just need to read, you just need to ask and you just need to get on with it. On that basis, there is no need to delay it. We need to act now. Shame on the Albanese government for not supporting this right now.