Albanese unbowed to political pressure on gambling ad reform

Australia will end 2025 without any major changes to laws regarding gambling advertising, with the Labor government steadfast in resisting calls for a response to the You Win Some, You Lose More report.

With parliament in its final sitting week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been twice questioned about his government’s failure to respond to the 31 recommendations of the bipartisan committee into online gambling, which was chaired by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy in 2023.

The recommendations around a three-year phased ban on gambling advertising have captured most of the political attention, and on Wednesday, Independent MP Andrew Wilkie tabled a motion to ask the PM to allow a vote free of party affiliation on the issue.

The motion was easily defeated 85-14, but Wilkie and fellow MP Rebekah Sharkie both made impassioned pleas for action on the issue.

“There is an urgent need for this parliament to decide on whether or not to allow individual members to exercise their personal judgment informed by their communities on the matter of whether or not there be a free vote … on a phase-out of gambling advertising,” Wilkie said.

“Not only is the community sick to death of the endless gambling advertising, the community is sick to death of the way that advertising is normalising gambling, the community is sick to death at the way advertising is effectively grooming children to start gambling as soon as they can, that’s not an exaggeration.”

Wilkie said afterwards that he and his other crossbench supporters want action on the gambling ad ban.

“This is not about having anyone’s name on it, we just want the outcome. We want Peta Murphy’s flagship recommendation that over three years, gambling advertising is phased out and eventually banned, we just want that,” the Tasmanian MP said.

“If the Prime Minister or the Treasurer came in and said they are going to do that, I’d be delighted.”

Wilkie, Sharkie, and fellow independent Kate Chaney have led the charge on the issue and they have been further emboldened by suggestions that several of the major parties’ backbenchers also support the move.

Labor MP Mike Freelander and Liberal MP Simon Kennedy both said this week that they believed a conscience vote on a gambling ad ban would pass the lower house.

The responsibility for much of the reforms suggested in the You Win Some, You Lose More report falls to Communications Minister Annika Wells.

Wells began discussing the issues with stakeholders in July and August this year, shortly after taking over the portfolio, but no further announcements have been made.

Wells’ predecessor Michelle Rowland was set to take the reforms to the Labor party room last year, only for the Prime Minister to take it off the agenda six months out from a federal election.

It has been suggested this week in other media outlets that Labor was set to water down its approach on advertising reform, using the pending ban on under-16s on social media as cover.

Albanese has increasingly become the focus of questions around the government’s lack of movement on reform and Wilkie asked him this week about his stance.

“Our Labor caucus makes decisions, which is why we have done more than any government since Federation to tackle problem gambling,” he said. “We’ll continue to work as a caucus and as a government on this issue.”

Asked again by Independent MP Dr Helen Haines about the government’s stance on gambling advertising regulation on Wednesday, Albanese cited the achievements of the national self-exclusion register BetStop.