00:01Australians lose the most of any country in the world.
00:06Said differently, our government does the worst job of any country in the world protecting
00:11its citizens.
00:12And this is an industry, they only do well when Australians do poorly.
00:16And the better that industry does, the worse Australians do.
00:19Right now, they'll be free to have gambling ads during kids programming, unlimited gambling
00:25ads over 8.30 at night, and then online, unless you opt out, you could be subject to unlimited
00:31gambling ads.
00:32Now, this is a country that already has the worst gambling problems in the world, and they
00:38actually have crumbled to the gambling lobby.
00:41There's a number of things that could strengthen it.
00:44The Greens and the Liberal Party voted together to send it to a Senate inquiry.
00:48Very disappointingly, Labor voted against that.
00:52Well, the government says it's primarily focused on children incidentally being exposed to
00:57gambling advertising with this legislation.
01:01Isn't it important to try and remove the threat of gambling harm from kids?
01:04That's a good start, isn't it?
01:06I don't know what they mean by incidentally, because right now, kids programming can get
01:10it.
01:11Right now, if you're a kid, I just went, I was in the US with my son, who's 10.
01:15We watched probably 20 soccer World Cup games.
01:18We didn't see a single ad.
01:19I came back here.
01:21We watched the Australia versus Paraguay game, 20 minutes before kickoff.
01:25On SBS, we got served a Bet365 ad, walking through the odds.
01:28In South Carolina, you can open carry an AK-47, walk down the street, but you can't see a gambling
01:35ad.
01:35How is it that we have this problem here, and this government is going to allow, even
01:40under these changed legislations, that exact ad we got served on Bet365, we would continue
01:45to get after this legislation?
01:47My son would still be continued to get that, because there's no blockout period before live
01:51sport.
01:51If he tunes in to watch the replay the next day, he'll still get served that ad, unless
01:56we've found the opt-out button.
01:58And we've all tried to cancel that subscription service, where you're like, how do I find it?
02:01Well, they've just said you have to have some way to opt out.
02:04And SBS has already had an opt-out.
02:07People can't find it.
02:08It's only, I'm told, 0.2% of people who've opted out, despite 80% of the population consistently
02:15saying in surveys they want to see less gambling ads.
02:18This Prime Minister has a gambling problem.
02:20Unfortunately, the Labor Party has a gambling problem.
02:23But their backbench is starting to speak out.
02:26Sam, you had an experience when you were a teenager with someone who had a gambling addiction.
02:31Can you tell us about that?
02:33Yeah, look, I was a Year 12 student.
02:35There was a younger teacher who was very close to a lot of us.
02:39He started borrowing some money from me as a Year 12 student.
02:42After we left school, we remained friends for a couple of decades, and he later admitted
02:47he had a gambling problem.
02:48I watched this man, a caring man, a great man, lose everything.
02:53He lost his job, he lost his livelihood, he lost his superannuation, he ended up living
02:59in housing commissions, suffering with other addiction issues, because he could not escape
03:04sports betting and poker machines.
03:06That led me to go to Gambling Anonymous.
03:08I met white-collar mums and dads who were so wrapped in addiction, they ended up stealing
03:14from their employees and doing jail time.
03:16I've met people who've lost relationships.
03:19Only last year, I met a sister and some parents of a boy.
03:23They were reading a letter from him, talking about how he hated himself because he was at
03:27the beach with his girlfriend and dog, and he couldn't enjoy the moment without checking
03:31his odds.
03:32In the next paragraph, he went on to say how his mother was working a job to pay off his
03:36gambling debts, and how he hated himself for that, and he wanted to kill himself, and
03:39he did kill himself that night.
03:42And I can empathise.
03:43Trying to help my teacher in that moment, I understand how helpless these family members
03:47feel.
03:48So, Simon, there are calls for a Senate inquiry into the bill, but as Communications Minister
03:53Annika Wells points out today, an inquiry would delay the legislation.
03:58Isn't it better to have this in place now rather than to wait?
04:04Well, that's a bit rich from Annika Wells, because the Murphy report, and Peter Murphy was
04:08a Labor MP, handed down a gambling report over three years ago.
04:13So, we called, the Prime Minister promised actually it would be done before the Christmas
04:18before last, at Peter Murphy's funeral he spoke about it.
04:22They refused to act on that report for three years.
04:25They've been negotiating with gambling lobbyists.
04:27Now suddenly they want to rush it through with all these loopholes that continue to oppose
04:32kids, expose kids to gambling, that continue to allow bet inducements.
04:38This is a minister who is completely captured by the gambling lobby.
04:41She hasn't had a good track record, and it's very curious after a three-year delay, suddenly
04:46she wants to ram it through.
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