00:01I'm pretty underwhelmed, I suppose, like a lot of my colleagues who work in this field.
00:07I don't want to be too cynical, but it does seem after a thousand days since the Murphy
00:14Report brought down a series of recommendations to bring it and to advance it today when there
00:27are so many other issues that the government could have been pressed on.
00:33It seems like a bit of a distraction to me.
00:35Let's dig into the detail of some of these changes.
00:39One of them is that gambling ads will be limited to three per hour between 6am and 8.30pm with
00:45a complete ban during live sports broadcast during that time.
00:48What kind of impact do you think that will have?
00:52Not a lot, I'd say.
00:55I keep returning to the Murphy Report that Jevielman talks about, it's a cross-party
00:59report on online gambling, unanimously accepted 31 recommendations, and its main finding, recommendation
01:13number 26 was a phased running down, running out of all gambling, advertising in all media.
01:25For online, by the way, I should say.
01:28So it seems to me that people are using the terms like tinkering around the edges.
01:33It will have an effect.
01:35But compared to the kind of blockbuster recommendation which came through the cross-party report in
01:40June 2023 and all this time later, we're now talking about how many ads are you allowed
01:49to have and when and that kind of thing, whereas the elegant, you might say blockbuster solution
01:57for the Murphy Report was we don't have to have this discussion because it's not going to be
02:03on any media at all, anywhere.
02:05Why do you think the government hasn't gone as far as the Murphy Report was advocating for?
02:11Political caution, I think.
02:16The vested interests involved here are very considerable.
02:22And, I mean, this move was supposed to have been made, it's been watered down somewhat,
02:29but I think a more substantial move was supposed to be made before the last election and I think
02:34a calculation was made that it was not a good time to antagonise big sport, big media and big gambling
02:42at that time.
02:45You know, I won't say is there ever a good time, but I think there probably is because
02:49if you look at most of the research that's been done on this topic, there's enormous public feeling
02:57about being bombarded with ads.
02:59And it's not just about children and minors, it's also about adults.
03:05As I like to say, Australia is the gold medal winning country in the world for per capita
03:13losses of gambling, about $32 billion Australian per annum.
03:19The Prime Minister has argued that this is about striking the right balance.
03:23What more do you want to see here and do you think there is any scope for further action?
03:27Well, I think there is, and I would be very concerned if there was some kind of position
03:32by this government that there was nothing else that could be done, this is it.
03:37I don't think very many people who, public health people, people who work in the communication
03:44media field, gambling field and so on, I don't think they're very happy with this.
03:49So they want more, and I think it's time to go back to the Murphy report and revisit its
03:58much stronger recommendations for banning online gambling advertising in all media.
04:04David Rowe from Western Sydney University, thanks for your time.
04:07Pleasure, thank you.
04:10Bye.
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