PM Anthony Albanese could face political backlash over his reforms to gambling ads.
Australia’s long-running battle over gambling advertising has returned to the centre of political debate, as communications and sports minister Anika Wells prepares to present the Albanese government’s long-awaited Gambling Advertising Act to parliament.
The legislation marks Labor’s first substantive attempt to settle one of the most politically contentious issues of Anthony Albanese’s premiership. Yet before being debated by MPs, the bill is facing calls for amendments and an enquiry.
It has been sent to an eight-week Senate enquiry with a push for restrictions on TV ads to be extended to all live sports. The move ensures Australia’s gambling advertising framework will remain under intense political scrutiny.
The headline measure is prohibiting gambling operators from using influencers, celebrities, athletes, podcasters and other notable personalities in paid promotional campaigns.
This would be alongside restrictions on television and radio advertising, new online opt-out mechanisms, limits on advertising to minors and a levy on wagering operators to fund awareness campaigns for BetStop – Australia’s national self-exclusion register.
A long fractious road
Leading Labor to victory in 2022, Albanese endorsed the recommendations of the late Peta Murphy’s landmark You Win Some, You Lose More enquiry, which called for a three-year phased ban on gambling advertising across television, radio and digital media.
Murphy argues that sweeping reforms were justified by the scale of gambling harm across Australia.
The enquiry estimated around 300,000 Australians experience severe gambling addiction, while a further 600,000 suffer moderate or low-risk gambling disorders.
Australia also records the highest gambling losses per capita in the world, with annual consumer losses estimated at between AUD$25bn and AUD$32bn.
The enquiry also called for a prohibition on gambling inducements and bonus offers, alongside the creation of a single national gambling regulator to replace Australia’s fragmented state-based regulatory framework.
However, the Prime Minister had effectively parked the issue for the past 12 months.
Gambling advertising reforms were notably absent from Labor’s 2025 federal election campaign and, when questioned repeatedly by Australian media, Albanese offered only that the issue was “sensitive” and required further consideration.
The Prime Minister first showed his hand in April, confirming that Labor would stand by its proposed whistle-to-whistle restrictions on gambling advertising during live sport rather than pursue Murphy’s recommendation for a comprehensive advertising ban.
Instead, Albanese argued his government’s priority was to “end the fragmentation of gambling” regulation across Australia. However, he maintained that future reforms would be delivered in the spirit of the Murphy report, while balancing the interests of broadcasters, sporting bodies and gambling harm advocates.
Murphy’s enquiry nevertheless established the benchmark against which Labor’s reforms continue to be judged.
Opposition: Labor lost its spine
The government’s compromise has nevertheless failed to unite parliament.
Within Labor, MPs Mike Freelander and Louise Miller-Frost have welcomed the legislation as meaningful progress, but both maintain that Australia should ultimately adopt further reforms, including a national gambling regulator and a prohibition on gambling inducements.
The Coalition is also weighing amendments that would extend restrictions to all live sports, regardless of broadcast time, and strengthen controls on bonus bets and promotional incentives.
The strongest criticism has come from the Greens. Senator Sarah Hanson-Young dismissed Labor’s package as “half-arsed”, arguing the government had failed to confront Australia’s gambling industry despite years of evidence gathered through the Murphy enquiry.
“The government needs to grow a spine here,” Hanson-Young says. “Stare down the gambling lobby, stare down the big online media companies that are reaping the benefits of their advertising.”
Independent senator David Pocock has similarly accused Albanese of abandoning the ambition of the Murphy report, arguing that Labor squandered a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to break the relationship between gambling advertising and Australian sport.
His amendments seek to restore Murphy’s original recommendation of a comprehensive advertising ban within three years, prohibit gambling inducements and strengthen online consumer protections.
Wells defended Labor’s approach, arguing the reforms represent the most significant overhaul of Australia’s gambling advertising rules in decades. She warns that prolonged parliamentary scrutiny risks delaying protections already demanded by the public – a mandate carried in the “spirit of Peta Murphy”.
“I would say every day that gambling harm reduction advocates and their supporters in the parliament argue for an extended Senate inquiry, further public inquiry, the other side of the fence uses that as a reason to delay implementation,” Wells says.
“To me, delaying actual reform and actual implementation isn’t worth further consultation on a piece that has been very publicly and prolifically discussed for three years.”
Wells has also framed the reforms around reducing children’s exposure to gambling advertising, insisting that paid promotions by influencers and online personalities have become increasingly difficult for existing regulations to capture.
“It doesn’t matter how many followers they have or which platform they use, under this law, a gambling company cannot enter into an arrangement with an influencer to promote gambling to their followers,” she adds.
Albanese can’t hide…
For Albanese, the political blowback is inevitable. Having elevated gambling advertising reform as a signature pledge before delaying its settlement for more than a year.
By shelving a reform package that initially carried rare cross-party consensus and broad public backing, the Prime Minister transformed what had been a largely consensual policy debate into one of the defining political disputes of his second term.
Rather than resolving Australia’s long-running arguments over gambling advertising, Labor’s gradual retreat from the Murphy blueprint has ensured that every compromise will now be measured against the reforms it once promised to deliver.
