Darni. Last week we spoke to you about your story on the Australian Parliament's Sports Club, how I was registered as a lobby group and sponsored by the gambling industry. So apart from everyone else reporting on that and not giving you any credit, what's happened after you broke that story?
It blew up in a way that I didn't expect it to.
Danielle say it is Kriik's media reporter and no stranger to a scoop.
We spoke on Monday about this club that organized the special games of sport between politicians and journalists and offers corporate memberships that start reportedly at a cost of two and a half thousand dollars. Amongst those corporate members who is responsible Wagering Australia, which is a peak body for the gambling industry that represents companies like sports Bet.
Darney reported to this sponsorship by the gambling industry and the questions around lobbying. We're making some MPs who attended very unhappy.
And in my piece we had a quote from David Pocock, who's an independent senator for the ACT, who was really critical of the relationship that the club has with the gambling lobby. So he took that to a Senate estimates hearing with Foreign Minister Penny Wongo's representing the PM.
Now, I know you want to get a grab ar, but I don't know that the Parliamentary Sports Club is a lobbying firm.
That it might not.
Basically, it was this back and forth over whether the parliament Sports Club was a lobby organization and the function that it had, and some of the transparency around that.
Is it's a Parliamentary sports club and it's not well and it may be required the under the Code of Conduct or whatever, the Code of lobbying what's called the Register of Lobbyists to register.
I accept that that clip goes around the internet and by Thursday he had been booted from the club.
This is when the story really.
Blows up, the idea that this ex Wallaby could be booted out of the sports club.
I'm Vaniel James and you're listening to seven AM today, Danny sayid, I'm the sports club that's just not cricket. It's Friday, October seventy. There are a lot of peculiarities about this story, but this one sort of does my heating. So imagine booting one of the all time great back railers from your team. What did the club organizers say about why he was booted?
So the club organizer is a blow called Andy Turnbull, and he said that David Pocock's position was untenable after he had raised the issue in Senate Estimate. So he gave a statement to Kriikee and he essentially said that David Pocock, raising it in the manner that he did, suggested that he had brought up the club into disrepute.
There ended up being a number of leagues of messages between Andy Turnbull and David Pocock, and he actually describes the sports club as the most a political organization in the Parliament, and he wrote to David Pocock, sadly, this week you've see our twenty years of serious effort to bring a harmonious and fun environment to a small part of each sitting day. You chose a cheap shot that will have no effect on the outcome of your anti
gambling campaign. I'm sorry, it's reach's point, but you have left me with no choice. Very stern, very stern, very stern. It's I'm picking up my bat and ball and I'm going home. Then there's the Prime Minister and his relationship to the club, into Pocock, into Turnbull and he gets asked about it on Friday morning up in Brisbane and he says, the club presidency comes with the gig, David Pocock being David Pocock, getting himself in a story. You know,
this is a voluntary organization. The inference being he is accusing him of grandstanding, he's accusing him of being attention seeking. And then he says, the amount of time I have spent on the Australian Parliament Sports Club this year is zero.
I have participated in zero events in terms of sports, just because I'm a bit.
Busy, because I'm just a little bit busy, which he of course is as the PM. But past chairs of the organization are people like Mel Braff and who's the current director, people like Barnaby Joyce and Mick McCormack. It's not necessarily a thing that comes by default when you're the PM. And that is really really fascinating. This idea that Albanizi has sort of raised of well I don't get a choice is just part of it's just part
of it. The third part is the amount of time I've spent on the Australian Parliament Sports Club this year is zero. That's not strictly true, because he spoke at the season launch of the sports club at the Press Club two months ago, and we have photographs of him speaking, and there are a number of other speakers, people like stakeholders and industry bodies. Kay Campwell, who's the SEO of Responsible Wagering Australia Capitol Brief reported was at that event as well.
So do you think the Prime Minister is mistaken or misleading when he says he's had zero involvement.
I think he's trying to minimize his relationship to the club quite reason because obviously this is such a hot button issue. I think it's slightly misleading in the spirit of it in terms of passing and partists. I think it is misleading. So suggest he spent zero time on the club. I don't have any information to contradict the idea that he has participated in zero events, but to suggest that he's spent no time on it, that he doesn't think about it, that he has no real substantive
relationship with it, which is what he's trying. In my view to suggest here, I think that's misleading.
So putting that aside when it comes to David Pocock, does he have a point? I mean Pocock would have known about the sponsorship when he was playing in the club.
Right yeah, And I think this touches on a really interesting sort of discussion that also negates a lot of the arguments around the substantive impact blobbing here, right the idea that David Pocock a would have known about the sponsorship reasonably he would have and casual sports social sport especially is a great tool for relationship building and it's a really positive thing and there are lots of benefits
it does. It fundamentally does a really good thing for relationships across the various people that work in Parliament House. That's why he's sort of been inclined to stay in the club and didn't resign voluntarily, and he sort of wants there to be some sort of sporting for him.
Obviously, as wall we have seen the impact of that.
The interesting part is this counter argument that comes from the likes of Andy Turnbull who say there's an unwritten rule that you don't talk shop while you're playing sport and that there's no real lobbying going on here. The fact is that you form these relationships while you're playing sport, and that's the point of the thing. You can't have an organization that is based in relationship building that is a positive thing, and simultaneously have that relationship building have
no impact. Otherwise your organization's pretty useless. That's the admission you're making.
Coming up a club without a ball thief Danny. It wasn't a great headline for the club when they booted David Pocock, So what's been the fallout?
This is fascinating.
So a number of fellow mostly tier independent MPs have followed his lead, so a Legraspender and Sophie Scomp's went with him, and Nick Ryan had already quit at this point by the time we had published and Alegraspender called his ejection of disgrace. She said the sports club should be about politicians love of sport, not their sad addiction
to the gambling lobby. I can't be a part of a club that promotes the gambling lobby because it's such a big headline and again completely in congruous for a punter to see one of the only sort of able sportsmen in Parliament. There's a couple of others kicking her, but certainly one of the fittest and fastest in the.
Parliament be booted out of the club.
The Prime Minister is still called it absurd that it's this sort of nefarious lobbying organization, but he suggests that David Pocock should be allowed to play, and all of a sudden, Andy Turnbull follows the PM's suggestion on Friday afternoon, who sort of walks back some of that snark we talked about and says, well, participation should be open to everyone. Who am I to argue at the Prime Minister and invites David.
Pocock back, So he's back in No, he.
Has come out and said that he won't redoin until the club undertakes a transparent, open process to consider all current and future sponsorships. There are rumblings that we're hearing about what's going to happen sort of on the twenty eighth or so in a couple of weeks when the Parliament comes back and sits again. Is David Pocock just going to show up on the lawns outside of the
Senate wing? What do you do when you know this, this hulking back rower comes up to you and he says, I'd like to play place.
Are you going to tell him no?
And so what is the club said? I mean, are they war gaming this possibility?
I imagine they are.
But now they have deregistered the club as of Monday. They say that they've deregistered the club on the basis of advice they've taken from the Register of Lobbyists.
There's a bit of a weird.
Element here where the Register of Lobbyists is run and maintained by the Attorney General's Department. The reason that Anie Turnbull gives for the club being registered as a lobby organization in the first place is because he says he got advice from a very senior member of the Attorney General's Department suggesting that he should register the club as
a lobby group. And so there's at some point somewhere some conflicting advice being given to if any Turmberle is of course telling truth that there's somewhere there's some conflicting given to the Parliamentary Sports Club from the Attorney General's Department. And I'd be really really interested to see that advice laid out in full.
So Darnie, through your reporting, you've gone ahead and you've blown up a sports club. I hope you proud of yourself. What do you think is likely to happen now? In terms of reform.
It's a real shame that it's that it seemed to have this effect because also I didn't I didn't realize until this afternoon that the Parliamentary Sports Club is also responsible for the infamous Polly's Verse Press cricket match which Andrew Purben has been trying to get me in for a number of years. I still play great cricket. Now that might be off the cards, I'm afraid. But in terms of reform, I'm really I really don't know. I'm really curious to see whether sort of the more informal
types of sports that have played at Parliament House. There's a long running squash competition, for example, at Parliament House that sort of is very not corporate. I wonder whether those sorts of things will take more precedence or whether things will just carry on as usual and David Pocock will just be forced to throw rocks at windows in Parlament House on the lawns and that's going to be his new sporting pursuit.
And of course there's a much bigger and far more seriously ship behind all of this, Darney, and that's the government's willingness to address the bigger issue of their inaction on evidence based gambling reform. What sense do you have of where that's at at the moment.
I think there's been lots of moving parts that sort of effect whether or not we see movement on gambling advertising reform. And it is things like sports rights, it's things like new television deals being broken. It's things like the gambling lobby itself having a presence in Parliament House as it does. But the government hasn't responded to the Murphy report, which was ordered back in September twenty twenty two. There's not really a sense that the government's going to
do anything in the immediate term. We are coming up to the Spring racing Carnival, which is one of the big It's betting Christmas for the betting companies and for the lobby. I will believe it when I see it at this point. This government previously started to commit to partial bans on gambling advertising sort of in the lead up to the twenty twenty five election, then went back on that and said that there wasn't going to be
anything to laughter the election. We're now a solid six months post election, so I don't anticipate there to be any significant change. Noting, of course, the government line that they've done more on gambling arm than any government since federation, which is their sort of routine talking point.
That is in a sense true.
They've made a number of changes around things like self exclusion registers and whatnot, a number of self regulatory changes for gambling companies. A lot of those aren't being adhered to anyway, so I'll believe it when I say it.
Dannie, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you very much for having me, Daniel.
As always, you can read Dannisaya It's reporting at krikey dot com dot are you. There are many many exclusives there. Also in the news, a protest group behind regular pro Palestinian rallies has won a case in the Supreme Court against the new South Wales government. The Palestine Action Group challenged laws introduced earlier this year with stop protesters from
gathering around places of worship. Lawyers from the group organizer Josh Lees, successfully argue that the laws gave police too much power, including the move protesters on even when there was no reason to believe worship has felt obstructed, harassed or scared. And an Australian soldier has died in a training accident in Townsville. The soldier died after a vehicle rollover on Wednesday evening. In a statement, the Department of
Defense confirmed the death. Two other soldiers were injured in the accident but have since been dis charge from hospital. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am. Thanks for listening.