Who was consulted before the gambling ad bill was written, and who wasn't

The Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee reports on the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 on 17 August 2026. Before that report lands, the bill has spent a fortnight friendless in Canberra, opposed as introduced by the Coalition, the Greens and the crossbench alike, and the government has been weighing whether to shelve it altogether rather than accept the changes needed to get it through the Senate. Independent MP Monique Ryan’s account of who was consulted while the bill was drafted, and who wasn’t, remains the more solid basis for judging who shaped it than donation figures alone. That is where this piece starts.

The scale of what is being regulated is worth stating plainly. Australia has the highest per capita gambling losses of any country in the world, an estimated 31.5 billion dollars in the 2022 to 2023 financial year, roughly 1,500 dollars for every adult. This is not a marginal harm reduction question. It is a global outlier that successive governments have known about for years.

In 2023, a parliamentary inquiry chaired by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy delivered a report titled You win some, you lose more. It made 31 recommendations, unanimously endorsed by a bipartisan committee, and stated plainly that “partial bans on gambling advertising do not work.” Independent senator David Pocock has since named three tests drawn from that report: a phased ban on all gambling advertising, a ban on inducements, and a single national regulator. The bill introduced on 2 July 2026 meets none of the three in full. It caps television advertising at three per hour between 6am and 8.30pm, bans ads during live sport in that window, restricts online ads to logged in verified adults, and bans uniform and stadium advertising. None of it commences before 1 January 2027. Three years on from Murphy, Australians have lost an estimated 104 billion dollars to gambling, according to Australia Institute analysis of expenditure data.

The bill’s most consequential omission was inducements, the bonus bets, deposit matches and hospitality offers Murphy’s committee recommended banning outright, without delay. Earlier this month the Senate inquiry heard from former NRL player Luke Bateman, who told senators he had been offered free interstate travel, race day hospitality and, he alleged, illegal drugs by a wagering company’s VIP account manager. The companies named have rejected the claims. Any drug allegation is a matter for police, not the communications committee, and it does not itself prove the case for banning inducements. What it did was put a face on the wider pattern the committee had already heard evidence of, VIP treatment engineered to keep high value bettors betting. That pattern, not the specific allegation, is what campaigners point to when they argue inducements distort behaviour in a way ordinary advertising does not.

For most of the fortnight after the bill’s introduction it had no viable path through the Senate. That changed on 10 August, when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Angus Taylor met to negotiate changes. Albanese told Labor caucus he expected amendments within days addressing inducements and children’s exposure to advertising. Taylor said the Coalition wanted predatory inducements dealt with while keeping what he called balance. Neither leader has said publicly how predatory will be defined in the amendment text. That definition is the whole contest in miniature. If it covers only high value VIP perks of the kind Bateman described, it will leave the mass market bonus bets and deposit matches that reach far more Australians untouched. If it covers all inducements, as Murphy recommended, it delivers one of the three tests in full. Nobody outside the negotiating room knows yet which version emerges.

The crossbench has not signed on to either version. Senator Pocock has moved his own amendments, including a full ban on advertising and inducements, and told the ABC this month that every non-government senator thinks the bill is not strong enough. Greens communications spokesperson Sarah Hanson-Young told reporters Taylor needed to not be scared of Pauline and pass real protections for families and has said the Greens will not support the bill even with an inducements amendment unless it also delivers a national regulator and a phased total ban. That leaves the government needing either Coalition or Greens votes in the Senate, and a Labor-Coalition deal on a narrower inducements clause is the more likely path this week, over a broader deal that would satisfy Pocock and the Greens.

Australian Electoral Commission disclosures show gambling companies gave to both major parties, including 88,000 dollars from Sportsbet to federal Labor and 60,000 dollars to the Liberal Party in 2023 to 2024, alongside 60,500 dollars from Tabcorp and 66,000 dollars from Responsible Wagering Australia to Labor. Reuters separately found parliamentarians accepted 245,000 dollars in free sporting tickets while the bill was under consideration. None of this is illegal, and all of it is disclosed. It documents access, not wrongdoing, and access matters because Ryan’s account of the drafting process shows industry access was structural, not incidental.

The NRL and AFL sit inside that structure too. A Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education report found the NRL earns approximately 50 million dollars a year, and the AFL between 30 million and 40 million dollars, through product fee arrangements tied to betting turnover on their own matches, an arrangement this bill does not touch at all. The bill will strip gambling logos from jerseys and stadium signage, but the codes will still profit from every dollar bet on their games regardless of how that betting was advertised. That is worth holding alongside the visibility changes. Removing a logo is not the same as removing the financial incentive behind it.

Australia Institute polling through 2026 has found 76 to 79 per cent of Australians support a total ban on gambling advertising. That level of support has held for months without producing a total ban. What changed the bill’s prospects this fortnight was testimony in a Senate committee room. That raises a fair question for readers to sit with themselves: if majority public opinion did not move a friendless bill, what does it take to move one, and what does that say about how this Parliament actually works?

The amended bill could reach the House of Representatives before the Senate committee reports on 17 August. Read the committee’s findings against Murphy’s original 31 recommendations when they land and watch specifically how the final text defines a predatory inducement. Then contact your senator before the bill comes to a vote, not after.

Your Vote. Your Future.

You know what to do.

Sue Barrett is the founder of Democracy Watch AU and Before You Vote a free civic education resource for every Australian who wants to cut through the spin. Before You Vote publishes every Tuesday and Friday. If this was useful, send it to five people.