David Pocock

to gambling and you just realise this is just having such a huge human toll on people across the country and it's something because there's so much shame attached to it like you watch the ads this is something that should be very fun it's social you're apparently with your mates you're winning the reality is you're scrolling your phone at 2am chasing chasing a loss trying to turn it around on an obscure sport that you would never otherwise watch

And so, you know, I've had so many mostly young men pull me aside over the last couple of years at events and say, hey, can I talk to you privately?

And just say, like, thanks for what you're doing.

I'm finding this really hard.

And I can't really talk to my mates about it because I feel so ashamed that I've got the problem.

So, you know.

parliament had this big inquiry it was a landmark report that made 31 recommendations the central one was banning all gambling ads because they looked at all the evidence partial bands don't work in the past when you they tried partial bands there were even more ads and so how does that oh the ads were on like other platforms yeah just different times but you know the industry just finds a way around it yeah

So seeing this proposal, yeah, it seems to fly in the face of, one, what all the evidence says, what the experts say, and then community sentiment.

Like, you know, this could be a huge win for the government to come out and say, we're going to do this, and then we're going to find a way to actually plug the gap when it comes to commercial, you know, broadcasters, free-to-air television.

There's got to be a way to actually make that business model sustainable and not have it rely on gambling advertising.

No, not that one.

I think if you were looking at the figures the other day, I think it's around 10% of advertising on free-to-air.

And so it's not insignificant.

Something like a levy on gambling, 1.5%, I think would more than cover that.

I get the argument from sports.

They want sponsors.

They want to be able to invest in their game.

But when it comes to the AFL and NRL now, my understanding is that they now have a business model where they're actually getting kickbacks.

They're getting a percentage of bets placed.

And I think that's quite worrying for the direction of sport.