Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson-Young, I would make a few points. The first is that the government has done more in the last couple of years to tackle gambling harm than those opposite did for nine years. We made it clear that the status quo is untenable and have been focused on addressing three key priorities: minimising children's exposure to wagering advertising; breaking the connection between wagering and sport; and reducing the saturation and targeting of wagering advertising. We've delivered significant online-wagering harm reduction initiatives, including: verification for online wagering; banning the use of credit cards for online wagering; forcing companies to send their customers monthly activity statements outlining wins and losses; introducing new evidence based taglines in wagering advertising; providing direct funding for specialist financial counselling to support people affected by problem gambling; introducing nationally consistent staff training and new minimum classifications for video games with gambling-like content, which will go live shortly; and launching BetStop, the national self-exclusion register, which has been used by more than 32,000 Australians. So there is a lot of action that has been undertaken, and obviously there is more to do.