Speech: Ban on Gambling Ads on Public Transport Passes Parliament

CLOSING REMARKS
Ban On Gambling Ads 

Watch Connie present this speech live in Parliament here!

THE HON CONNIE BONAROS, MLC:  I am a bit nervous that something is going to come tonight, because it all seems to be going very smoothly up until now. I am very grateful to all speakers, to the government, for their support. I would like to thank the Minister for Consumer and Business Affairs, who I have worked with closely on this particular issue, but I would like, via the Hon. Russell Wortley, to send a special thanks to the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport for seeing the light and the benefits of healthy advertising over revenue.

I would also like to thank the Hon. Rob Simms, the Hon. Jing Lee—because I know she supports it—and the Hon. Ben Hood. I feel like common sense has prevailed tonight, and that is a good thing. When I moved this motion, in all seriousness, I did say that you could literally pick up the words of the Malinauskas government release on junk food bans and replace the words 'junk food' with 'gambling' and the exact same message would apply. It made sense to me, and I do acknowledge the work that the Hon. Rob Simms did in that space when it came to junk food advertising.

It made sense to me that we should be doing what the other states are doing—NSW and Victoria in particular—and banning gambling advertising for all the reasons the Hon. Ben Hood has outlined tonight, and that other honourable members have outlined tonight as well. There is no place for it.

We do not need to see trams going up and down North Terrace with great big gambling advertisements wrapped around them, or any public infrastructure for that matter, whether it is a tram or otherwise. When it comes to our transport services, we have better things to advertise on them than gambling, especially given the impact that they have on kids each and every day. There were some reports done just recently in terms of the number of ads that kids see on TV when it comes to online betting, sports betting and whatnot.

I remind honourable members while I am on this winning streak that there is another bill before parliament that seeks to address that specific issue, as well as one that seeks to address the issue of poker machines. However, it is not just those ads that they are seeing on TV. They catch transport to and from school each day and they get that constant reminder, and that is how you normalise gambling.

I have had lots of online debates while I have been working through this with members of the public, but all these things are geared towards one thing and one thing only: it is getting young kids from that age accustomed to and normalising gambling so that when they turn 18 they can legally put their money in a poker machine or another form of gambling, and we make it mainstream. We do not want kids to be doing that. We do not want to be normalising that sort of behaviour.

In Australia, and particularly in South Australia, we have the highest rate of gamblers in the world on a per capita basis. That is not anything to be proud of. I think that this is a very sensible measure aimed specifically at children. I am very grateful to all honourable members for their support and I look forward to its implementation by the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport very soon.

Motion carried.