Member for Bradfield:
Deputy Speaker, we all know the statistics — but they bear repeating. Australians per capita lose more money to gambling than any other country on Earth: $31.5 billion a year. And as many as 20% of suicides in Australia are caused by gambling.

A 2023 study found that nearly three-quarters of Australian adults had gambled in the last 12 months — and of those, almost half were classified as being at some risk of gambling harm.

Australia, we have a gambling problem.

But the good news is that we know simple, practical steps to tackle it — and that is banning gambling advertising.

Why do I say it’s simple and practical? It’s straightforward to implement. We’ve done it before with tobacco advertising. It works. It’s been effective in Spain, and bans have also been put in place in Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany.

It’s politically easy and would sail through Parliament because the Australian public overwhelmingly — at a rate of 76% — supports a total ban on gambling advertising.

And yet here we are, well over two years after Peta Murphy achieved the near-impossible: a multi-partisan consensus on a total ban on gambling advertising. And nearly six months since the Albanese Government’s landslide, 94-seat victory in the last federal election.

It has still not occurred — and it’s confounding.

The usual approach — telling the most harrowing, damaging, tragic tales of gambling harm — is not working. Those stories have been told. The government has been begged by grieving families repeatedly. But nothing changes.

So today, I thought I’d reorient the discourse.

A few weeks ago, as mentioned by the Member for Clare, we were lucky enough to hear in this place from one of Australia’s most beloved cricketers, Usman Khawaja, alongside families of people who had lost loved ones to the damaging impacts of gambling, and survivors who had managed to escape its clutches.

Usman told us about two other impacts that aren’t usually discussed as frequently — although constituents in Bradfield have written to me about the first of these.

The first is the impact gambling has on our children’s experience of sport.

Everyone knows that gambling ads saturate television and online coverage of games. Kids these days are as likely to know the odds of their favourite player scoring the first try in a rugby league match as they are to know how many tries he scored that season or how many premierships their team has won.

Sport and gambling have become inextricably linked.

Is this how we want children and families to experience sport in this country?

Sport has been a core part of Australian identity for all our lifetimes — and such a positive part of our identity, teaching lessons of hard work, perseverance, teamwork, health, fitness, achievement, and much more.

Do we now want something so positive and wholesome to be correlated with something as negative and destructive as gambling?

Anyone who’s watched a football game on commercial television, caught up with basketball highlights on YouTube, or gone to the pub with friends to watch the T20 cricket match is all too familiar with the pervasiveness of gambling advertising.

Sport should be for sport’s sake — not to make a quick buck, or to get a quick added thrill by placing a cheeky bet.

And the second, less discussed aspect of harm created by gambling is that experienced indirectly by our athletes.

Usman explained that athletes can be targeted by punters who have lost money on matches they’ve gambled on. In some instances, athletes are targeted and even doxed when large gambling losses are suffered and punters blame the athlete.

Clearly, this impacts the wellbeing of athletes and adds unnecessary stress and scrutiny to what they already experience.

I raise these issues that Usman raised for an important reason. The horrific stories that we’re used to hearing about the impacts of gambling — family breakdowns, ruined careers, suicide, bankruptcy — are apparently not cutting through.

How many victims do we have to drag through this place, having them retell their harrowing stories, retraumatising them, before something is done?

We have a landmark Murphy Report. We have a public crying out for action. But nothing — no action from this government.

The stories of heartbreak and loss apparently do not move the members that comprise this government.

So maybe stories of kids now linking sport with gambling, and of its negative impacts on athletes, will.

The crossbench will keep up the fight on this.

The government can bet on that.