David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The government's contribution on this bill and on gambling reform generally seems to be a kind of riff on Saint Augustine—you know, their position on the bill is, 'Oh Lord, give me gambling reform, but don't give it to me yet.' That is their basic position, but I think they have read more into Saint Augustine's writings because, if you look, you can also see another core part of Labor policy on gambling. It's another quote from Sanit Augustine: 'Faith is to believe in what you do not see.' Those are the two things that summarise Labor's position on gambling reforms. Faith is to believe in what we do not yet see from Labor.

There is a reason for that. It is because they are in part purchased by the gambling industry. They keep making donations to the Labor Party, and they are getting the kind of snail-paced pretend reform, faux reform, that they're paying for. It's a pretty simple analysis: you give a political party a bunch of money to prevent effective reform and then you see it play out here. You see it play out in an endless, slow-moving parliamentary committee. We all know this is urgent. We all know there is a pressing need, particularly to stop these gambling ads saturating the feeds of young people and working people. We know it is an urgent matter for reform, but where is the urgency from the government?

The response from the government is the kind of response the gambling industry has paid for. They are getting a really solid return on their donations to the Labor Party, and that is pretty, bloody clear. It is really depressing to see the way in which the gambling industry is degrading sports in this country—in fact, degrading sports across the planet because sport has always represented human excellence. Through teamwork, mental and physical skill and endurance, sports bring out the best in us, which is why, at no matter what age, Australians love our sport. From childhood to adulthood, Australians have always found sports to be an integral part of our social and cultural life. We wear the jersey with pride, whether playing for our club or cheering on our favourite team. It is part of who we are, and it taps into our core emotions from excitement, to anxiety, to elation, and, as we saw last night as New South Wales supporters, heartbreak. Sports always have and always will be a beautiful representation of human excellence—except at Suncorp Stadium and Lang Park!

It is something we enjoy with our friends and our family and something that actually brings us all together, but over the last several decades sports, like so much else under this dollar-driven market capitalist economy that dominates our social, our economic, our personal lives, sports have become severely commodified in the form of sports betting. In this country you can't escape sports betting advertising. When we catch public transport, we see it up there on buses, trains and trams. When we're online, we see it in the videos rolling in, suggesting the videos we watch, link after link to bet on the latest game or the upcoming match. And when we watch television or listen to radio, listen to podcasts, we are literally being bombarded with ads for sports betting. It has become almost inescapable in this country. The Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation's recent report found that children and young adults now intrinsically associate betting with sports as a result of being bombarded with sports betting ads. That is so deeply wrong, but that is the link that the gambling industry are willing to pay millions and millions for. They're willing to pay for the ads to saturate our social media feeds, to bombard us when we're on the train, to grab our attention in the middle of the match and before the match. They're paying to make that addictive link. They pay millions to make billions. That's what the gambling industry does with advertising. They pay millions for advertising to make billions in profits off some of the most vulnerable in this country.

In my home state of New South Wales, gambling is a massive problem. In many ways New South Wales is a society which has one of the worst gambling problems on the planet. It is estimated that gambling losses in the last several years have exceeded $9.5 billion a year. That's just losses. That's not the total amount that's gambled; that's just the amount that's been lost by ordinary people all across my home state of New South Wales—$9.5 billion a year, and probably more than that. While pokies are still the biggest problem in New South Wales, with losses of more than $7 billion per year just on poker machines, or $21½ million a day every day in my home state—

Debate interrupted.