In the kind of move that Labor once derided in their opponents, the government used the cover of the federal budget – while most journalists were literally locked up – to deliver its response to the late Peta Murphy’s report into online gambling, ‘You Win Some, You Lose More’.
1,049 days since its release, most of the Labor MP’s recommendations to reduce gambling harm (31 altogether) have been ignored. Instead there will be a slight reduction in TV advertising, some money for an education campaign, and a crackdown on illegal offshore gambling, along with a ban on ads in stadiums and on sports jumpers. There will be no national gambling regulator, and no ongoing funding for research on gambling harms, including suicide.
One of the fiercest advocates for serious action on this problem, the independent senator and former Wallaby David Pocock, who knows a thing or two about the intersection between professional sport, gambling and politics, said he believed the government was ‘genuinely embarrassed’ about its own piecemeal response.
‘It’s so out of step with what the vast majority of Australians want,’ he said. ‘There was a poll that came out the same day they released it, showing 77 per cent of Australians backed a full gambling ad ban, and 80 per cent of Labor voters.
‘So they’re just going to try and squeak this thing out during budget lockup, and hope there isn’t much scrutiny of it.’
Inducements remain
Pocock believes a partial ban will be difficult to enforce, and won’t benefit ordinary Australians, who remain the biggest losers to gambling in the world, per capita.
He and others are alarmed there will be no action to ban damaging inducements, a particular concern of Peta Murphy’s, in which people who realise they are on a losing streak, and stop gambling, are offered increasingly attractive offers to return and lose more money.
‘You watch the ads, and this is about having fun with your mates, having a win, enjoying sport, and being an Aussie larrikin,’ he said.
‘The reality is people lying in bed at 3am scrolling their phones, chasing losses, getting an inducement, getting back on a bad bandwagon. It’s devastating, and we need an evidence-based public health response to this – that’s the Murphy report – and yet we’ve got a government that is captured by vested interests.’
His hope now is that pressure from the crossbench and the opposition will result in a Senate inquiry which might lead to improvements in the legislation before it becomes law.
While the gambling lobby is pleading for more time and clarification, independent MPs Monique Ryan and Andrew Wilkie have been scathing about the government’s response to what they say is a major public health issue, while Health Minister Mark Butler said Anthony Albanese had already flagged the key elements of the government’s response in his earlier speech to the Press Club.
Communism!
As for the federal budget, the government’s modest changes to improve inter-generational equity have been attacked in absurd terms by the right wing press, Liberal and One Nation parties.
‘This is a Marxist, socialist, communist budget,’ declared Pauline Hanson, who really needs to invest in a dictionary.
Apparently nothing could be worse than wanting to disperse wealth a little more fairly, according to Hanson, who reminisced to the media about living without when she was growing up, then buying investment properties when she had ‘a few extra dollars’. Who will think of the poor battlers with multiple investment properties?
None of this nonsense fazed the latest rats to leave the sinking ship captained by Angus Taylor, namely former Liberal Party senator Hollie Hughes and former Liberal vice-president Teena McQueen, who have both now joined One Nation.
Hughes resigned from the Liberals in 2025, supposedly because she didn’t like the treatment of her former leader Sussan Ley. She’s now been emboldened to make her admiration of Pauline Hanson public.
One Nation’s new federal representative David Farley, who’s just been elected to Ley’s old seat of Farrer, is due to join Barnaby Joyce in the House of Representatives within months. Fun times!
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
