Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

The government does not support this referral. The Albanese government takes its responsibility to protect Australians seriously, particularly children and young people, from the harms of gambling. On the important issue of wagering advertising, the government has been clear that the status quo is untenable and that things need to change. 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: firstly, reducing the exposure of children to gambling ads; secondly, breaking the nexus of wagering and sport; and, thirdly, tackling the targeting and saturation of ads. There's no doubt that every Australian family wants to enjoy sport, from the grassroots to the professional leagues, without being bombarded by gambling ads. It's certainly a feeling held strongly in my household, and I know it is for many other Australians. We want kids off screens and on the sporting field, and we want to restore the tradition of sport as 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's important we get these reforms right, because, as we have seen in the past, bad policy design leads to bad outcomes. In 2018 the coalition's reforms saw a huge spike in gambling ads, and we have seen significant growth in online wagering ads since. 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've gathered the evidence about harms, we have assessed the impacts of various options, and we are now consulting on a proposed model. As a responsible government, we're taking the time to consult and ensure that what is proposed is effective and will not have detrimental unintended consequences.

As we work through these reforms, we have continued to deliver the most significant online wagering harm reduction initiatives of the past decade—things like banning the use of credit cards for online gambling, introducing new evidence based taglines in wagering advertising, strengthening classification of gambling-like features in video games to better protect children, establishing mandatory customer ID verification for online wagering, and launching the National Self-Exclusion Register, or BetStop, for problem gamblers, which more than 32,000 Australians have now registered with, with 40 per cent of those opting for self-imposed lifetime bans. We know that it suits the political purposes and political agenda of the Greens party to come in here and argue that Labor is not taking enough action on these matters, but even that list I've just supplied is a part of the action that this government has taken on online wagering harm reduction initiatives—more action than any government has ever taken in Australia's history.

The parliamentary inquiry that was 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. There is no need to repeat this process through another inquiry, which would simply waste people's time and divert valuable resources. The government understands the harms. There was good work done in the parliamentary inquiry, and we're considering those recommendations. It's why we've implemented more harm minimisation measures than any other government, and that's why we will provide a comprehensive response to the parliamentary inquiry outlining further reforms. Accordingly, the government opposes this committee referral.