Immigration, gambling deals and Australia’s “gayest party”
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What is the current status of the Albanese government's gambling reform deal with the opposition?
I'm Daniel James and you're listening to 7 AM. After years of pressure to tackle gambling harm, the Albanese government is trying to get its long-awaited reforms through parliament, looking to cut a deal with the opposition, sparking a debate over just how far the government is prepared to go to get its reforms through. Meanwhile, immigration is becoming one of the defining battles in federal politics, as One Nation's growing support and hardline approach force both major parties to confront how they respond to its agenda. And amidst it all, Barnaby Joyce declared One Nation as one of the gayest parties in Australia, after a former One Nation candidate called homosexuality a mental illness. Today, SBS Chief Political Correspondent Anna Henderson on a hectic week in Parliament, the fight over immigration, gambling reform, and a warm conversation between the PM and the President.
It's Saturday. August fifteen.
And uh, welcome to 7 a.m. It's been a week of wheeling and dealing for the government, particularly on this gambling legislation is trying to get through Parliament. What do we know about where that deal is at? Because at one point the PM was actually threatening to walk away from it altogether.
Yeah, we did have that news coming out, you know, that the Prime Minister was saying if the attempts to make change were too significant, that he was willing to shelve.
Mr President, this is good reform, this is a major step forward, and the Parliament should vote for it. If they don't, if they don't, then you do have the option of the status quo. You do
have that option. There are different views on how serious he was on that front given the backbench push for something to be done, given the amount of people in the parliament, even from, you know, the coalition side who wanted to see action and were speaking out publicly. Yeah, I hope that um we will pass this legislation. I know that
get hold of them as young adults and then uh who knows from from there on maybe a lifelong customer.
These are very important questions and as Senator Hanson Young has said, uh this legislation is a dog's practice. So I guess some saw it as a bit of a game of chicken. Others saw it as a genuine possibility. Uh, but in the end, I think we saw the Prime Minister and the opposition leaders sitting down together on a number of occasions to personally try and hash out a solution. So the Greens are dealt out, whatever they want to see happen here in terms of some really significant structural change to the bill is not going to be where this lands. But certainly we're seeing leader to leader conversations to try and get this through the upper house. And it does seem like that matter of inducements is going to be something that the Prime Minister is willing to really look at in terms of making sure that that evidence, extraordinary evidence that was heard before the parliamentary committee about just the scale of legal and illegal inducements is somehow dealt with.
I would receive direct offers customized for me that basically said if you deposit $1,000, we will give you $1,000 in bonus bets.
And how would you get that message?
That was sent directly from an account manager. So VIP account manager, an employee of the betting corporation, would send that directly to you from their company.
And, you know, the idea of kind of opting in to these advertisements rather than opting out, particularly on streaming services, doesn't seem to be resolved. And, you know, SBS also uh takes gambling advertising. That must be something that I note in this conversation. But we did have a situation during the week where crossbenches held a press conference and they kind of uh really challenged journalists to say, you know, most of you are collecting a page check that in some way may be related to the revenues of these gambling lobbyists and we do think that you should really consider whether you're doing enough reporting on this.
are scared stiff. of the gambling industry, scared stiff of the major media outlets, scared stiff of the power of the major sporting codes.
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Chapters
3 chapters
1
What is the current status of the Albanese government's gambling reform deal with the opposition?
0:01–8:19
2
How are gambling inducements and VIP offers being used to target vulnerable Australians?
8:19–16:20
3
Why does the Prime Minister appear hesitant to walk away from the gambling legislation?
16:20–16:36