Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The government does not support this motion. The Albanese government takes seriously the responsibility to protect Australians, particularly children and young people, from the harms of gambling. On the important issue of wagering advertising, the government has been clear and the status quo is untenable. The government's consultation process in response to the parliamentary inquiry into online gambling has been thorough, valuable and has raised additional considerations that we will continue to work through. The government is focused on three key outcomes: reducing the exposure of children to gambling ads, breaking the nexus of wagering and sport, and tackling and targeting the saturation of ads.

Every Australian family wants to enjoy sport from the grassroots to the professional leagues without being bombarded by gambling ads. We want kids off screens and on the sporting field and we want to restore the tradition of sport to family time. Parents across Australia need to have their confidence restored so they can sit down with their kids to watch their favourite team without being inundated by sports betting promotions. It is important to get these reforms right because, as we've seen in the past, bad policy design leads to bad outcomes.

In 2018, the coalition reforms saw a huge spike in gambling ads and we've seen significant growth since in online wagering ads. It's also important to consider the multiple channels over which advertising is delivered, not just television and radio but also digital platforms and social media where advertising can be targeted at vulnerable Australians. We have gathered the evidence about harms, we have assessed the impacts of various options and we are now consulting on the proposed model. As a responsible government, we are taking the time to consult and ensure what is proposed is effective and will not have detrimental or unintended consequences. We've been open about the consultation process and reject the Senator's assertions that our policies will be influenced by one particular group of stakeholders over another.

There are no secrets here, and the government rejects the conflation the senator is drawing between matters of freedom of information and minister's diaries and the existence of lobbyists. The rules around lobbyists are clear in parliament. Any person who seeks to influence decisions on behalf of a third party must be registered with the lobbying code of conduct. Where a lobbyists fails to comply with their obligation, the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department may remove them from the register.

As for our comprehensive response to the Murphy inquiry report, the matter will be considered by cabinet, as is the normal process for government decision-making. This is a complex reform, and we're determined to get it right. I would attest that this has been a highly consultative process. Senator Pocock himself attended a briefing on the government's proposed model, along with many of his crossbench colleagues in August.

As we work through the reforms, we've continued to deliver the most significant online wagering harm reduction initiatives of the past decade—banning the use of credit cards for online gambling; introducing new evidence based taglines in wagering advertising; strengthening the classification of gambling-like features in video games to better prevent children associating gambling features with recreation activities; establishing mandatory customer ID verification for online wagering; and launching the National Self-Exclusion Register, BetStop, for problem gamblers, of which more than 28,000 Australians have registered, with 40 per cent of those opting for self-imposed lifetime bans.

The parliamentary inquiry chaired by the late Peta Murphy gathered a significant amount of valuable evidence including from public health experts and people with lived experience of gambling harm, resulting in 31 recommendations that the government will respond to in due course.