Independent MP Kate Chaney: partial gambling ad bans ‘just don’t work’
Independent MP for Curtin, Kate Chaney, is speaking with ABC RN about the government’s upcoming response to a proposed ban on gambling.
At the weekend, the Nine papers reported the government would shun the blanket ban and propose a cap of two gambling ads per hour on each channel until 10pm, and banning ads an hour before and after live sport.
Chaney acknowledged the reports were “a rumour at the moment”, but said:
What the evidence showed in the hearings was that partial bans just don’t work. It just moves ads around from one spot to another… but there’s still a lot of gambling ads. And certainly when you speak to parents of young kids who can quote the odds and know an awful lot about gambling, I think it wouldn’t really address the normalisation of gambling in sport, which is a massive problem I’m hearing from constituents.
The communications minister, Michelle Rowland, was contacted to appear on the program “but a spokesperson said she wouldn’t be commenting on the speculation”, ABC RN reported.
Key events
50c public transport trial kicks off in south-east Queensland today
The Queensland premier, Steven Miles, was on ABC RN Breakfast earlier to discuss the state’s six-month trial of 50c public transport trips in the south-east.
The trial kicks in from today. Miles, speaking from Brisbane Central station, said it was busier than normal but “we’re not seeing any kind of excessive crowding”.
We have an operation centre that’s monitoring very closely that uptake. That’s ultimately why we didn’t make it free, why we kept it at 50 cents so that people still need to tap on and top off. That means we can monitor usage across the network in real-time…
Of course if people don’t use it then it will be hard to justify and so I’m saying to everyone that if you want to keep almost-free public transport, you need to use it – you need the get on the train, the bus, the ferries, and if you do we’ll be able to keep it.
PMs comments on Makarrata taken further than what it was intended, McCarthy says
Pressed on whether or not the prime minister misspoke with his comments regarding a Makarrata commission, Malarndirri McCarthy said:
I’m saying that the interpretation of what the prime minister said has been taken completely further than what it was meant to. The prime minister was very genuine in his return to the Yolngu people. He was given a sacred totem, which is not to be smeared at, not to be laughed at, and not to be disrespected. The Yolngu people were very strong about the fact that he was strong as a prime minister to take the voice to the people of Australia. It did not work, it failed, and the prime minister still returned to the very people who were deeply disappointed and shattered…
I’m not sure how many times I can say that the principles of the Uluru statement from the heart are very much supported by our government.
Indigenous Australians minister says First Nations people ‘need time’ after voice defeat
The new minister for Indigenous Australians, Senator Malarndirri McCarthy, spoke with ABC News Breakfast just earlier following fears the government may ditch its promise to establish a makarrata commission.
Karen Middleton brought us all the details earlier in the blog here.
McCarthy said she had been reading the papers, but when she was in Arnhem Land beside the prime minister “that’s clearly not what I heard”.
He certainly gave very strong principle support for the Uluru statement from the heart. He’s maintained that in terms of the voice, having taken the referendum to the people last year, and the values around makarrata, treaty and truth-telling are still very strong for our government.
Asked about the comments from Pat Anderson, McCarthy said she has seen the word “confusion” in headlines and can understand there would be confusion, because “the question is purely around one element”.
I would caution everyone to just calm down, that this has been a significant weekend at Garma. We are not moving away from our commitment to the Uluru statement from the heart in terms of our love and our support for all of those who gathered there in 2017. What I would say to all Australians is that First Nations people need time.
This was clearly a soul-shattering event, as was said to us in Garma on the weekend. People are still recovering from that. I know in my new role as the minister for Indigenous Australians, I now have to make sure I canvas right across the country where other First Nations people are at.
For more on this, Daniel Hurst looked into the issue yesterday. A spokesperson for the communications minister, Michelle Rowland, had said the government was “firmly committed to minimising harms from online wagering”.
The government continues to engage with stakeholders regarding the recommendations from the online wagering inquiry as we formulate our response.
You can read the full report below:
Q: Do you think Labor is a risk here of betraying Peta Murphy’s legacy if they do not follow the recommendations of the committee that she chaired?
Kate Chaney:
I hope that’s not the case. I hope the long consultation is because the government’s actually going to do the right thing and make gambling ads history, just like we did with tobacco. We live in hope it’s not too late, but the rumors are not encouraging.
Kate Chaney, who was part of the committee chaired by late Labor MP Peta Murphy, was asked what Murphy would think of the role sporting bodies and administrators are “playing behind the scenes time trying to prevent these changes from coming in.”
Chaney responded:
Peta did a great job as the chair of that committee and and pretty unusually, we had unanimous recommendations. So people on the committee from all parts of politics backed all 31 recommendations.
There’s no additional comments or different opinions. So it was a pretty unusual situation, and Peta’s passion about sport and the need to remove gambling as a normalised part of sport really came through and and was reflected by the rest of the committee as well. So I don’t think she’d be thrilled to see that the resistance to keeping gambling out of sport was coming from our sports codes.
Independent MP Kate Chaney: partial gambling ad bans ‘just don’t work’
Independent MP for Curtin, Kate Chaney, is speaking with ABC RN about the government’s upcoming response to a proposed ban on gambling.
At the weekend, the Nine papers reported the government would shun the blanket ban and propose a cap of two gambling ads per hour on each channel until 10pm, and banning ads an hour before and after live sport.
Chaney acknowledged the reports were “a rumour at the moment”, but said:
What the evidence showed in the hearings was that partial bans just don’t work. It just moves ads around from one spot to another… but there’s still a lot of gambling ads. And certainly when you speak to parents of young kids who can quote the odds and know an awful lot about gambling, I think it wouldn’t really address the normalisation of gambling in sport, which is a massive problem I’m hearing from constituents.
The communications minister, Michelle Rowland, was contacted to appear on the program “but a spokesperson said she wouldn’t be commenting on the speculation”, ABC RN reported.
Australia claims more olympic medals overnight
Anthony Albanese has congratulated the Australian olympians awarded medals overnight, including Meg Harris, Nicola Olyslagers, Eleanor Patterson and the women’s relay team:
More medals for our Aussie champs!
Meg Harris 🥈 has claimed silver in 50m freestyle, Nicola Olyslagers🥈 and Eleanor Patterson🥉 will take the podium together for the High Jump, and our spectacular swimmers have taken silver in the medley relay🥈! pic.twitter.com/T7QDoNUcmn
— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) August 4, 2024
You can have a read of what you missed overnight from the Olympics, thanks to our sports editor Mike Hytner in Paris:
Australia is currently sitting in fourth place, with the United States first, China second and France third.
Police culture ‘must shift’ after apology to Indigenous Australians
A historic apology for police injustices inflicted on First Nations people will lose its significance if not matched by a cultural shift within the NT force.
As AAP reports, the race discrimination commissioner, Giridharan Sivaraman, made that claim after the NT police commissioner, Michael Murphy, said sorry for the harm caused by officers throughout history.
The apology came on Saturday at Australia’s largest Indigenous gathering, the Garma festival in north-east Arnhem Land. Sivaraman acknowledged it was a vital step towards improving police relations in the territory, but added “words can only go so far”.
Change must now be embedded throughout the entire police force and the structures set up within it … I hope this cultural shift is being driven by the very top of the police force.
A commitment must be made to independent investigations of recent actions by serving members of the NT police, such as the coming review into systemic racism by the NT’s anti-discrimination commission, Sivaraman said.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social justice commissioner, Katie Kiss, agreed the apology was “necessary and symbolic”, but said the force also needed to reckon with the injustices that have continued “to this day”.
If the apology’s promise to never again repeat the mistakes of the past is to be realised, then it must be underpinned by honesty and accountability about what is still happening in the NT today.
Daniel Hurst
Greens tell government to scrap student caps bill
Further to our last post on the proposed limits on international student numbers: the Greens have called on the federal government to “read the writing on the wall and scrap the caps”.
The deputy leader of the Greens, Mehreen Faruqi, said the majority of submissions to a Senate inquiry into the bill had raised concerns. Hearings are due to begin in Canberra on Tuesday.
In a statement, Faruqi sought to tie Labor to the opposition leader, Peter Dutton:
Labor is crushing universities in a bid to look tough on borders and compete with Mr Dutton on cruelty.
Using international students as cash cows and then scapegoats for the Labor government’s failure to provide affordable housing is pure racist dog whistling which targets and harms international students and migrants.
When Faruqi previously likened the policy to a “racist dog whistle” in the Senate chamber on 2 July, the Labor minister Murray Watt responded that the Greens were “never very far from a wedge motion, never very far from a wedge political statement”.
Watt told the Senate that the government was seeking to “restoring quality and integrity to the international education sector after the shonks in the sector were left untouched for the last decade”.
International study caps will ’cause damage’, warns ANU expert
Daniel Hurst
The federal government’s crackdown on international students will cause “damage” and harm Australia’s reputation, a leading higher education analyst has said.
On Tuesday the Senate’s education and employment committee will begin an inquiry into the government’s higher education legislation. The bill includes a measure giving the government the power to cap the number of overseas students that may be enrolled with a provider or a class of providers for a year.
Andrew Norton, an Australian National University professor in the practice of higher education policy, takes aim at the bill in a report published today:
On its current trajectory, the government will cause much more damage than is necessary to achieve its policy goals. Its mistreatment of people hoping to study in Australia will harm the country’s reputation.
Some education providers will close and others will shrink. Thousands of people working in the education sector will lose their jobs.
Other industries relying on international students as workers and customers will go into decline. International education policy needs a period of pause and reflection, not the current poorly thought through plan to cap international student numbers.
Norton notes that “pent-up demand caused by closed borders in 2020 and 2021 and Australia’s popularity as an international student destination led to a record number of onshore student visa holders, 673,981 in May 2024”. But he notes the government has made a series of changes, including more than doubling student visa application fees and tightening the tests for awarding a student visa, which will probably be “enough to achieve population moderation”. He says:
Caps will be very difficult for education providers to administer without risking either under-enrolling relative to their cap or cancelling offers and confirmations of enrolment. Both will damage the providers and the students who want to study as these providers.
Uluru co-chair fears prime minister is ‘rolling back’ Makarrata promise
Karen Middleton
A co-chair of the dialogues which led to the Uluru statement from the heart, Pat Anderson, fears Anthony Albanese is abandoning his promise to create a Makarrata, or Indigenous truth-telling commission and trying to reduce it to “a vague vibe or a series of casual conversations” instead.
In a statement last night, Anderson challenged Albanese to clarify whether he is still committed to a Makarrata after he appeared to distance himself from the concept he had previously agreed to fund.
Anderson suggested the prime minister needed to clarify comments he made on ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday morning that makarrata meant “coming together after struggle” and government talking to Indigenous leaders about the way forward after the failed referendum on an Indigenous Voice to parliament fulfilled that definition.
The prime minister’s comments are confusing. Is he rolling back on the Labor election commitment to the Makarrata commission? We understand that a constitutional voice didn’t get up but the Australian people didn’t vote on truth or treaty.
She suggested Albanese was reducing the idea of Makarrata to something less than what was intended and promised:
Makarrata is not a vague vibe or a series of casual conversation. The Makarrata called for in the Uluru statement was a bricks and mortar body and a clear election promise.
In the Insiders interview, Albanese cited the Yolgnu definition of the word “makarrata”:
Obviously, there has been a struggle for First Nations people. That’s why we talk about closing the gap, or what is really a chasm in some areas. And coming together is a principle of walking together. That engagement. It’s not a moment in time. It’s a process of coming together after struggle.
Welcome
Good morning, and welcome back to another week on the Australia news live blog. I’m Emily Wind, and I’ll be with you this Monday as we go through our rolling coverage.
Overnight, co-chair of the dialogues which led to the Uluru statement from the heart – Pat Anderson – said she fears Anthony Albanese is abandoning his promise to create a makarrata, or Indigenous truth-telling commission.
In a statement on Sunday night, Anderson challenged Albanese to clarify whether he is still committed to a makarrata after he appeared to distance himself from the concept he had previously agreed to fund. Karen Middleton will have more for us shortly on Anderson’s statement.
Meanwhile, a leading higher education analyst has warned the federal government’s crackdown on international students will cause “damage” and harm Australia’s reputation. We’ll have more on this from Daniel Hurst in a moment.
As always, you can get in touch with any questions or story tips via X, @emilywindwrites, or you can send me an email: [email protected].
Let’s get started.
