David Pocock (ACT, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the following matter be referred to the Environment and Communications References Committee for inquiry and report by 28 February 2025:

The extent and the appropriateness of industry influence over government decision-making as it relates to online gambling reform and the Government's response to the recommendations of the Murphy Inquiry.

I'm here today to seek the Senate's support for an inquiry into the influence the gambling industry and those that profit from them have over government decision-making. This morning, Senator Grogan emphasised how complicated this reform is, how uniquely complex it is and why a go-slow approach is best. I went back to the Hansard to look at how long it's taken to develop other complex pieces of legislation. According to the Department of Home Affairs, it took just eight days to have the Migration Amendment Bill drafted—just eight days to draft the bill that allowed the government to pay other countries to take people from Australia.

It seems that where there is the political will to do so, legislation can be developed quickly to meet any need. Meanwhile, with this reform, we are up to 16 months and counting from the time the government received the multiparty backed recommendations of the Murphy inquiry. I argue that this is not due to a nebulous concept of complexity. There is something else behind the government's decision to shelve this reform, and that is the influence of the gambling lobby, the big sporting codes and the corporate media, who are working to ensure that they can continue normalising this product among children so that the revenue can continue to flow to those industries for generations to come.

Since the crossbench first started advocating for a response to Peta Murphy's recommendations, we've seen signs of the influence these industries have over the Prime Minister of Australia's thinking. The first time was when the government's proposal was leaked almost immediately after it was briefed to the gambling industry. It was a tell-tale sign. Not a single consumer advocate or gambling harm expert had been consulted on the proposal. It took media appearances and letters from me and other members of the crossbench to ensure that they could actually be at the table. Then there were the meetings disclosed through orders for the production of documents and also the ones that weren't disclosed in OPDs.

There were meetings at coffee shops in Marrickville and opportunistic get-togethers following parliamentary friendship events. But the piece of correspondence that stood out to me was an email from the gambling lobby to the PM's office. On 24 April 2024, Responsible Wagering Australia shared a paper about an undisclosed topic with an unknown person in the Prime Minister's office. Most of this email is redacted, and we're told that it's for commercial reasons, but it's quite difficult to understand how an industry representative body—not one of the companies themselves—could be handling commercially sensitive information and then handing that over to the PM's office. That would mean that the industry body representing the biggest bookmakers in the country has been given access to commercially sensitive information from their members and then it's been developed into a paper in commercially sensitive form and then shared with the government and presumably with members. If that's the case, I imagine there would be competition concerns that regulators in this country may be interested in looking at.

What's worse is that, since that time, we've discovered that meetings went undisclosed by the PMO. I find it incredibly disappointing when the Senate agrees to an order for the production of documents and information is withheld and then someone FOIs them and gets the full suite of documents. The Australian Finance Review reported earlier this year that the PM went on a round robin of meetings with Channel 10, Channel 7, Peter V'landys, Cricket Australia, the AFL and Channel 9. For anyone interested, the NRL got a bit more time. They got 20 minutes with the Prime Minister. None of these meetings were disclosed in response to the OPD—not my OPD but an OPD that the Senate demanded—even though they were clearly in the scope of the order. We will wait for an explanation tomorrow. I thank the Senate for agreeing to get the minister to give an explanation, but it's another troubling sign that exchanges between the government and these industries are being concealed.

There have been multiple occasions when the PM has gone off script and found himself parroting lines from the gambling lobby. On 12 August, the CEO of Responsible Wagering Australia said, 'The risk of blanket bans on advertising in the wagering space is that we run the risk of driving Australian consumers to the illegal offshore providers.' To be clear, offshore gambling is illegal. That's why they're called 'illegal offshore providers'! But the very next day the PM said at a press conference: 'The internet means that people can gamble offshore. That means it is much more difficult to put restrictions on.' Of course, none of this is true. This is spin that has been used by the gambling industry for decades. As I mentioned this morning, the co-founder of gambling giant Paddy Power said recently that this argument is a 'load of baloney'. That's a clear example of a well-trodden line used only by gambling lobbyists, and the Prime Minister said it.

Here's another example. Recently the Prime Minister was asked by Zali Steggall MP in the other place where his gambling reforms were up to. He responded:

We know, when we look at where the harmful gambling comes from, that almost 70 per cent of that harmful gambling is actually poker machines. More than or around 15 per cent, off the top of my head … from lotteries and lotto and those tickets as well.

After hearing this, I got on the phone and asked experts where this data came from. They were stumped. They had never seen or heard of this data. I asked the department of infrastructure and the Prime Minister's department where he got this information from. It wasn't from them. I even asked the PM where he got it from. In a return letter from the Deputy Prime Minister I was told that it was data that he had recollected, that it had no actual source. Then, to the rescue, Peter V'landys, a man who runs two organisations that profit from gambling, made the mistake of giving these exact figures in an interview he gave to David Crowe and Paul Sakkal of the Sydney Morning Herald. According to that article:

V'landys argued that independent statistics showed that out of 100 people who sought help from a problem gambling hotline, 70 were due to poker machines, 15 due to lotteries, eight due to racing, four due to sport and three due to casinos.

So the only two people who have seen these figures are apparently the Prime Minister and Peter V'landys. Clearly Mr V'landys and the gambling lobby have more sway over what the PM says than experts or even the Murphy inquiry, which itself was a comprehensive examination of the harms associated with gambling advertising. I went into some detail this morning about just how comprehensive that inquiry was. It was the very best of our parliament. I watched some of the hearings and read some of the evidence, and that is what our parliament can achieve.

As I said this morning, Peta Murphy achieved something that many of us potentially will not achieve in our time in this place: a committee report on a controversial topic that has the unanimous backing of the parliament. This is exactly why this needs to be examined, because I'm certain this is the tip of the iceberg and that behind these glimpses sits yet more unseen influence that has delayed and now tragically stopped in this parliament a critical reform to a public health issue that Australians have been asking for. It's terrifying and deeply troubling that two lobbyists could have so much more sway over the Prime Minister's thinking than the parliament, public health experts, members of the Australian community—and parents, who are having to explain to their 12-year-old what a multi is.

What I'm proposing is not a long inquiry, but I do think it is an important one. It will allow us to scrutinise the timeline of events, it will allow us to find these documents that have been withheld from this Senate, and it will allow us to call and hear from those at the centre of why this reform has been shelved—a reform that had so much work put into it. The road map was there. After 18 months, it's been kicked beyond the next election. So I ask my fellow senators for their support to look into what I think is a really important issue for so many Australians.

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion moved by Senator Pocock be agreed to. A division is required, but we have to defer the division until tomorrow.