From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM. In Anthony Albanesi's political universe, personal relationships are everything. High on the list for Alberanesi is his bond with Peter Landy's, the chair of the Australian Rugby League Commission and chief executive of New South Wales Racing. That relationship has been central to the government's decision to again delay reforms of
gambling advertising, which Flandy's strongly opposes. Today special correspondent for the Saturday Paper Jason Kotsukus with the inside story of why the government hasn't acted on gambling reform. It's Monday, December two. So Jason the Prime Minister. He's famously a big rugby league guy. His team is the rabbit Os. But not only that, he has friends in the league. He's known to be close to the chair of the
Australian Rugby League Commission, in particular. Can you tell me a bit about him and about their relationship.
Well, that's exactly right. So Peter landis a huge figure in Sydney, someone the Prime Minister has known for a very long time. A measure of how close they've become is that When Joe Biden hosted a state dinner at the White House for Anthony Aberenezi in October last year, one of the people that the Prime Minister took along with him was Peter Flanders.
Peter the Landers, you're here for the state dinner?
How did this come about?
I lookwa had lunch one day with a Prime Minister and we were talking about Australian sport and how it would be in much the same way that his predecessor, Scott Morrison took Brain Houston to have a PM who's into rugby league? Is that a welcome thing for you? Look, it is also welcome. But he's also very smart.
He can see.
And then in May this year, Anthony Abenezi backed the NRLs push to add another team to the NRL competition based in New Guinea. The Prime Minister views this as a way of strengthening ties with not just PMNG but Australia's whole integration with the Pacific region, where Beijing is
also competing for influence. They also collaborated on a funding agreement to upgrade the historicch art Oval, which is in the Prime Minister's Grainleer electorate, with the Federal government kicking and nearly half of the fifty million dollars required to upgrade that oval.
Okay, so there's a close working relationship and also a close personal one. It's fair to say that Albert Easy and Plant is their buddies. How significant is that when it comes to the way that the Prime Minister has approached the issue of gambling reform.
I think it's very significant. I spoke to labour insider who said that no voice has been more important when it comes to informing the PM on the consequences of a complete gambling advertising ban than velandis. That same person put the AFL Chief Executive Andrew Dillon a close second, and that no one else, not even the Freeware Networks or Kerry Stokes or even News Corporation has mattered as much in this debate as what the two sporting codes think.
Yeah, as you say, we have heard a lot about gambling reform this year. Can you give me a sense of why that is, of why this issue has come to a head at this particular moment, well right back at.
The beginning of the term, I think in September twenty twenty two, the Minister for Social Services, Amanda Rishworth, she actually referred this issue to a Parliamentary inquiry and she asked them to have a look at online gambling and its impacts on people experiencing gambling RM. That committee was chaired by a Labor MP, the late Peter Murphy, and was made up of ten other MPs are drawn from both the two major parties and also the cross bench.
And while they were working on that report, I think in May last year, Peter Dutton kind of got the jump on the committee and preempted one of their key recommendations. He used his Budget in Reply speech to announce that a coalition government would move to banned sports betting advertising during the broadcasting of games and for an hour before and after the game as well.
In our country, futy time is family time, but the bombardment of betting ads takes the joy out of televised sports.
Ten days later, in Parliament, the Opposition Communication Spokesman David Coleman asked the Prime Minister.
Will the Prime Minister work with the Opposition to get this initiative implemented?
Now give a call to the Prime Minister.
I thanked the member for his question. No one likes their footing more than.
Mate Alban he's a responded by saying that he was very concerned about gamely ads. He said he found them annoying. But he questioned why the Coalition was trying to move on this at that moment.
If only they were in government sometime in the last decade, if only they'd had the opportunity to do something.
And he also had it that he was going to be waiting for Peter Murphy's Inquiry to deliver its final report because you know, that is what's appropriate, he said at the time.
Okay, So when the inquiry did report back, what did they find? You know?
Six weeks after Dunton came out with that promise to ban sports betting ads during games, Peter Murphy's Committee tabled its report You win some, you Lose more. The committee unanimously agreed on the thirty one recommendations that that report contained. But the one recommendation that's caused all the headaches for the government is the one that has called for a comprehensive ban on all forms of advertising for online gambling to be implemented over three years.
So will the government listen to the evidence. That's after the break so Jason, The government said they wanted to wait until they got this report, final report before dealing with the issue of gambling reform. So once they had that in their hands, what did they do next?
Well, last December, as the Communications Minister Michelle Roland was working through the government's response to the inquiry, Peter Murphy died from cancer and I think that added a lot of extra emotional charge to this issue because it was almost Peter Murffy's dying wish that the Government act on
that key recommendation to ban gambling advertising. So when Parliament returned in February this year, five days ironically before the Dunkley by election to fill the parliamentary vacancy created by Peter Murphy's death, Zoe Daniel, the Teal Independent, asked the Prime Minister whether he would in fact honor Murphy's call
for a full ban on gambling ads. What did he say, Well, he tried it out a form of words that he's kind of repeated each time he's been asked about this now, and that essentially has been that the Government is undertaking relevant consultations as you would expect us to do, he told Parliament then with all stakeholders. But by the middle of the year the same day that Albanezi met with
the NRL's chief executive Andrew Abdo. The government was in fact ready with a compromised proposal that it was prepared to share with all the relevant stakeholders under strict confidentiality arrangements. And instead of a blanket ban on gambling advertising, Michelle Roland had come up with a proposal to introduce a cap of two gambling ads per hour on each channel up until ten PM, with a complete ban on gambling ads an hour before and after live sport.
Right, So that's something, but it's not what the inquiry actually recommended.
No, it's a compromise. But when news of Michelle Rolin's proposal leaked, the Prime Minister refused to back it, and he told journalists at that press conference, you know they shouldn't believe everything they read in the paper.
Well, we'll announce what our preferred solution is when we announce it. So I I comment on speculation, Thanks very much, thank you.
One labor I spoke with told me that he didn't think Michelle Roland was very happy with the way the
Prime Minister responded to those questions. I think she was hoping that he would say something a bit more supportive that he would even be prepared to back the proposal, and their reading of it was, you know that the minister had gone out to stakeholders with a compromise that everyone was broadly comfortable with, and that Labor missed an opportunity to pass what would have been a significant reform that was in the public interest and that probably would have got a majority of voters on side.
It is an interesting situation, though, because you have a committee that's looked at the evidence and said that what's needed is a ban for ads on online gambling. The government has opted not to do that, but instead there's this compromise that's been proposed, but then when the Prime Minister is asked about that, he won't commit to it. So what's going on here and why is this becoming such a sticking point?
Great question, and I think you know, one gambling industry executive that I spoke to said that, in his view, they didn't really think that the government understood just how complex this issue was when they referred it to the inquiry, and they said they didn't think that the government really listened either to the industry representatives who appeared before that inquiry, including the sporting codes, the TV networks, even the gambling industry itself, who all told the MPs just how difficult
it would be to implement a ban. And I think the key thing here is how to replace or what is considered this vital source of revenue that's keeping television networks alive.
Right So where has all of this left the government, Jason? I mean, once the Prime Minister refused to back his own Communication Minister's proposal, did the possibility of reform die?
Well? It certainly looks that way right now. I think it's left everyone feeling very frustrated. Each week that Parlam has sat since August, the Prime Minister has faced questions on this issue from not just the crossbench but the opposition as well. We saw Tasmanian Independent Andrew Wilkie come out on Thursday to call a government a disgrace.
I have not seen a more egregious and shocking abandonment of the public interest than this government's refusal to implement a ban on gambling advertising.
I think all of this has left members of the government feeling angry too. One senior Labour source told me that the whole thing has been very frustrating that they're still trying to deal with the unintended consequences for the networks. And I think the PM has tried to defend the government's record saying.
We've done more in two years to tackle gambling hearts than has been done by any government since federation.
And if you look at the list that the PM recites often in question time, things like establishing a mandatory customer ID verification for online gambling, forcing online gambling companies to send their customers monthly activity statements outlining wins and losses, and introducing new evidence based taglines in gambling ads, among
other things. I do think maybe that the PM has a point the government hasn't done nothing, But I think for many people inside the government they think a lot of this debate is based on emotion, not hard evidence.
Sure, but there is this distinct sense that you get that we aren't really getting the full picture as to what's happening behind the scenes, because if you look at you know, what's actually occurred. We've got a government saying that they don't want to act on gambling reform until an inquiry really properly looks into it. Then that happens They find that online gambling ads should be banned during sport and it's now been well over a year, closer to a year and a half since the government got
those findings and they haven't responded. So bearing in mind what we know about the Prime minister's personal relationships, how should we be thinking about who the Albanezi government is really listening to when it comes to gambling reform.
Well, I think Peter Landez said to the Prime Minister, don't do it, and he hasn't done it. He said it's going to be bad for the NRL, it's going to be bad for the AFL. But I think really the Prime Minister has three bad options. He can impose a full ban on gambling ads that will upset the sporting codes and the media, and six months out from an election he doesn't necessarily want to be doing that.
He could implement the compromise proposal, and I think a majority of voters who say they want to complete ban on gambling ads probably aren't going to be happy with a partial ban. And then the other option, doing nothing
is not really good for him either. The first anniversary of Peter Murphy's death is actually this week, the fourth of December, and while I think it's unlikely that the government will announce a decision on this issue, it's still possible Parliament's finish, but Cabinet will still meet right up. I think until the week before Christmas. This is something that has to go through cabinet, so I think it's still possible that the Prime Minister could surprise us and come out with the decision.
Jason, thank you so much for your time.
Thanks Ruby.
Also in the news today, an Israeli airstrike on a car in Gaza has reportedly killed five people, including aid workers from the organization World Central Kitchen. The RDF said one of the aid workers was a harmask terrorist, while the World's Central Kitchen said it had no knowledge that any individual in the vehicle had alleged ties to the October seven attacks. Earlier this year, Australian woman, Zombie Frankcom was also killed in an Israeli attack on a World
Central Kitchen envoy in Gaza. And people suffering the debilitating effects of endometriosis will now be able to access the drug visan more easily. The government has announced it's adding the ENDO treatment to the pharmaceutical Benefit scheme. More than halving the cost. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am.
Thanks for listening.