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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media. I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

In Anthony Albanese's political universe, personal relationships are everything.

High on the list for Albanese is his bond with Peter V'landys, the chair of the Australian Rugby League Commission and chief executive of NSW Racing.

That relationship has been central to the government’s decision to again delay reforms of
gambling advertising, which V’Landys strongly opposes.

Today, special correspondent for The Saturday Paper Jason Koutsoukis, with the inside story of why the government hasn’t acted on gambling reform.

It’s Monday, December 2.

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RUBY:

So, Jason, the Prime Minister, he's famously a big rugby league guy. His team is the Rabbitohs. 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?

JASON:

Well, that's exactly right. So, Peter V'Landys, 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 Albanese in October last year, one of the people that the Prime Minister took along with him was Peter V'Landys.

Audio Excerpt - Andrew Clennel:

“Peter V'Landys, you're here for the state dinner. How did this come about?”

Audio Excerpt - Peter V'Landys:

“Look, I had lunch one day with the Prime Minister and we were talking about Australian sport.”

JASON:

In much the same way that his predecessor, Scott Morrison, took Brian Houston.

Audio Excerpt - Andrew Clennel:

“To have a PM who's into rugby league, is that a welcome thing for you?”

Audio Excerpt - Peter V'Landys:

“Look, it is also welcome, but he's also very smart.”

JASON:

And then, in May this year, Anthony Albanese backed the NRL's push to add another team to the NRL competition based in Papua New Guinea. The Prime Minister views this as a way of strengthening ties with not just PNG 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 historic Leichhardt Oval, which is in the Prime Minister's Grayndler electorate, with the Federal Government kicking in nearly half of the $50 million required to upgrade that oval.

RUBY:

Okay, so there's a close working relationship and also a close personal one. It's fair to say that Albanese and V'Landys, they’re buddies. How significant is that when it comes to the way that the Prime Minister has approached the issue of gambling reform?

JASON:

I think it's very significant. I spoke to one Labor 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 V'Landys. That same person put the AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon a close second. And that no one else, not even the free-to-air networks, or Kerry Stokes, or even News Corporation, has mattered as much in this debate as what the two sporting codes think.

RUBY:

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?

JASON:

Well, right back at the beginning of the term, I think in September 2022, 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 harm. That committee was chaired by a Labor MP, the late Peta Murphy, and was made up of ten other MPs drawn from both the two major parties and also the crossbench. 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 pre-empted one of the key recommendations. He used his budget in reply speech to announce that a Coalition government would move to ban sports betting advertising during the broadcasting of games and for an hour before and after the game as well.

Audio Excerpt - Pater Dutton:

“In our country, footy time is family time, but the bombardment of betting ads takes the joy out of televised sports.”

JASON:

Ten days later in Parliament, the Opposition communications spokesman David Coleman, asked the Prime Minister...

Audio Excerpt - David Coleman:

“Will the Prime Minister work with the Opposition to get this initiative implemented now?”

Audio Excerpt - Speaker:

“Give the call to the Prime Minister.”

Audio Excerpt - Anthony Albanese:

“I thank the Member for his question. No one likes their footy more than me.”

JASON:

Albanese responded by saying that he was very concerned about gambling ads, he said he found them annoying, but he questioned why the Coalition was trying to move on this at that moment.

Audio Excerpt - Anthony Albanese:

“If only they were in government sometime in the last decade! If only they'd had the opportunity to do something!”

JASON:

And he also added that he was going to be waiting for Peta Murphy's inquiry to deliver its final report because, you know, that is what's appropriate, he said at the time.

RUBY:

Ok so when the inquiry did report back, what did they find?

JASON:

You know, six weeks after Dutton came out with that promise to ban sports betting ads during games, Peta Murphy's committee tabled its report — You Win Some, You Lose More. The committee unanimously agreed on the 31 recommendations that the report contained. But the one recommendation that 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.

RUBY:

So, will the government listen to the evidence? That’s after the break.

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RUBY:

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?

JASON:

Well, last December, as the Communications Minister Michelle Rowland was working through the Government's response to the inquiry, Peta Murphy died from cancer. And I think that added a lot of extra emotional charge to this issue because it was almost Peta Murphy’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 Peta Murphy's death, Zoe Daniel, the teal independent, asked the Prime Minister whether he would in fact honour Murphy's call for a full ban on gambling ads.

RUBY:

What did he say?

JASON:

Well, he trotted 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, you know, 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 Albanese met with the NRL's chief executive Andrew Abdo, the government was in fact ready with a compromise 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 Rowland had come up with a proposal to introduce a cap of two gambling ads per hour on each channel up until 10pm with a complete ban on gambling ads now before and after live sport.

RUBY:

Right. So that's something but it's not what the inquiry actually recommended.

JASON:

No, it's a compromise. But when news of Michelle Rowland'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.

Audio Excerpt - Anthony Albanese:

“Well, we'll announce what our preferred solution is when we announce it, so I don't comment on speculation. Thanks very much. Thank you.”

JASON:

One Labor adviser I spoke with told me that he didn't think Michelle Rowland 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, you know, 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 a, what would have been, a significant reform that was in the public interest and that probably would have got a majority of voters onside.

RUBY:

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?

JASON:

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 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 what is considered this vital source of revenue that's keeping television networks alive.

RUBY:

Right so, where has all of this left the government, Jason? I mean, once the Prime Minister refused to back his own Communications Minister's proposal, did the possibility of reform die?

JASON:

Well, it certainly looks that way right now. I think it's left everyone feeling very frustrated. Each week that Parliament 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 the government a disgrace.

Audio Excerpt - Andrew Wilkie:

“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.”

JASON:

I think all of this has left members of the government feeling angry too. One senior Labor source told me that the whole thing has been very frustrating, that they're still trying to to deal with the unintended consequences for the networks. And I think, you know, the PM has tried to defend the government's record, saying:

Audio Excerpt - Anthony Albanese:

“We've done more in two years to tackle gambling harms than has been done by any government since Federation here.”

JASON:

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.

RUBY:

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 Albanese Government is really listening to when it comes to gambling reform?

JASON:

Well, I think Peter V'Landys 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 in the media. And six months out from the 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 a complete ban on gambling ads probably aren't going to be happy with, you know, a partial ban. And then the other option, doing nothing, is not really good for him either.

The first anniversary of Peta Murphy's death is actually this week, the 4th 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 finished but cabinet will still meet right up, I think, until the week before Christmas. You know, 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 a decision.

RUBY:

Jason, thank you so much for your time.

JASON:

Thanks Ruby.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today...

An Israeli air strike on a car in Gaza has reportedly killed five people, including aid workers from the organisation World Central Kitchen.

The IDF said one of the aid workers was a “Hamas terrorist”, while the World Central Kitchen said it had no knowledge that any individual in the vehicle had alleged ties to the October 7 attacks.

Earlier this year, Australian woman Zomi 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 Visanne more easily.

The government has announced it is adding the endo treatment to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, more than halving the cost.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. Thanks for listening.

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