Andrew seconded and spoke in support of a bill to ban gambling advertising as recommended in the Murphy Report. The bill was brought to the Parliament by the Independent Member for Curtin Kate Chaney, MP.
You can watch his speech or read an excerpt below.
“It’s an honour to second the Member for Curtin’s bill, because it would do what the Albanese Government has revealed itself as too weak and scared to do – finally ban gambling advertising…
In June 2023, when Peta Murphy handed down a unanimous cross-party report on gambling harm with 31 clear recommendations, I was hopeful. Hopeful because this isn’t the minority government of 2010 which was so fearful in the face of a campaign from the gambling lobby.
No, In this parliament Labor has an historic majority, the Opposition are still in disarray, we have Peta Murphy’s blueprint for reform, and there’s broad support to at least ban gambling advertising.
In other words, the Government has all they need to stand up to the gambling lobby.
And that’s why it’s particularly galling that more than 1000 days since the Murphy report was handed down, the Government has shown all the spine of a jellyfish.
In fact, in a particularly outrageous example of this lack of guts, the Minister for Communications herself told a former gambling addict and reform campaigner that she shouldn’t speak to the Government, but go and convince the wagering companies, television networks and sporting codes of the need for reform.
Doesn’t the Minister know what her job is? It’s not to wait for the companies she regulates to come and beg her to regulate them. It’s to act in the public interest, and in the interests of the hundreds of thousands of Australians experiencing or impacted by a gambling addiction, and enact reforms now…
So I say to the Prime Minister again, if you can’t bring yourself to take on the parasites benefiting from gambling, then get out of the way and let the rest of us do the work for you.”