Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I guess you do—online advertising. Still, the point is that we don't need gambling at all. Let's face it, to me this is about the whole point of gambling. I've just hated the creep of online gambling. It's not just the fact that it influences our children from a very young age—it brings gambling into their lives when they should just be watching sport and being motivated to go outside with a cricket bat and a ball, or with a footy and kick the footy around. Obviously, that influence is extremely bad, but there are also tax consequences to this.

Probably one of the easiest examples I can talk about is in regard to withholding tax. A lot of the online gambling companies aren't even based in Australia. When you park your $1,000 deposit into the account for future gambling, that money could go into an offshore account and it becomes very difficult to actually trace how much income is derived here in Australia. So it becomes another form of tax evasion that should be dealt with.

I'm not sure really how I'm going to fill up the full time to talk about this, because it's such a no-brainer. I can't see why we just can't support it. If Labor and the Greens want to add more to it later on then so be it—do it. But don't stop this from going ahead just because you don't think it goes far enough; it is a step in the right direction and every step counts. I'll leave it at that, other than to say that I'd probably support some of these motions that the Greens and Labor think should happen.

I do take umbrage at the idea that the states and territories are on board when it comes to cracking down on gambling, because they have been ripping off low-income and vulnerable people for years. I've seen that in my own state of Queensland. I grew up in Queensland quite happily and innocently in the seventies and eighties when we didn't have poker machines at all. We had our first casino, Jupiters Casino, in 1982. But most of Australia, or at least Queensland, survived for the best part of 150 years without having poker machines or any sort of formal online gambling. It pretty much stayed on the track. By all means, if you want to have a bit of punt, go down to the track on a Saturday afternoon, pull out your form guide and have a couple of brewskis, but not this idea of sitting in a pub 24 hours a day with access to a gambling machine. And it's only worse with online gambling. You don't even need to go to the pub to access that; you can access that on your iPhone at home.

It's interesting to talk about online entertainment. I think these iPhones are a bit of a scourge. There was a time, for example, 50 years ago, you might have had a radio and one TV channel that might have started at three o'clock in the afternoon. So you'd get pretty bored pretty quickly if you hung around the home. Today it's all too easy to get tied up with social media, online gambling, Netflix and whatever else. It's not doing society a lot of favours by allowing people to stay in their little ruts, in their little online worlds, and not get out to talk to people face to face.

I totally support this bill; I think it's a great bill. There should be more of it. I'm happy to say to Labor and the Greens, in good faith: if you want to go further with this bill, by all means, do so. I would happily look at supporting that. This is a step in the right direction. I don't see why you wouldn't support it in good faith.