October 5, 2025 • 14 mins
Every Wednesday morning during sitting weeks, politicians, staffers, public servants and journalists gather for a friendly game of sport. It’s meant to be casual, even wholesome.
But recently, that club, the Parliament Sports Club, quietly re-registered as a lobbying organisation. Its board includes the Prime Minister. Its members include representatives from the major sporting codes – and one of its sponsors is the gambling lobby.
All of this is happening while the government sits on a report that recommended a comprehensive ban on gambling ads; a ban that experts say is urgently needed to protect families and communities from the harms of gambling.
Today, media reporter for Crikey Daanyal Saeed, on how a casual sporting meet up became a vehicle for lobbyists, and what it tells us about the gambling industry’s grip on politics.
You can read Daany’s reporting here: https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/09/30/parliament-sports-club-gambling-lobby/
If you enjoy 7am, the best way you can support us is by making a contribution at 7ampodcast.com.au/support.
Socials: Stay in touch with us on Instagram
Guest: Crikey’s media reporter Daanyal Saeed
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Every Wednesday morning during sitting weeks, Politicians, staffers, public servants
and journalists gather for a friendly game of sport. It's
meant to be casual, even wholesome. But recently that club,
the Parliament Sports Club, quietly reregistered as a lobbying organization.
Its board includes the Prime Minister, its members include representatives
(00:23):
from the major sporting codes, and one of its sponsors
is the gambling lobby. All of this is happening while
the government sits on a report they recommended a comprehensive
ban on gambling ads, a ban that experts say is
urgently needed to protect families and communities from the harms
of gambling. I'm Daniel James, and you're listening to seven
(00:48):
AM Today media reporter for Krikey Danny Sayid on how
a casual sporting meetup became a vehicle for lobbyists and
what it tells us about the gambling industry's grip on politics.
It's Monday, October six. Darnie, thanks for speaking with me.
(01:12):
You've been looking into the way this supposedly casual sports
meetup is being run. So what did you find out
about the club, how it's set up and he's involved.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
It's run by a guy called Andy Turnbull who has
been a registered lobbyist for more than fifteen years now
and has been involved in the Parliamentary Sports Club for
more than thirty years. He runs a sports events company
called sports Hydrant, and that is the organization that's been
responsible for running this club for the last thirty years
(01:43):
or so. And there's a lot of really high profile
name So the PM is the President of the parliament
Sports Club. Don Farrell is the chair. You've got these
old high profile MPAs. Joel Fitzgibbon is a director. He
used to be a Defense minister. Malcolm Bruff was a
minister in the Howard and Turnbull governments. He's on that
(02:04):
board of directors, so is Stuart Henry used to be
a Liberal member. Melmann Inger's on the Sports Advisory Board.
Obviously he had a very brief political run as well.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Tell me a bit more about some of the groups
that go along to mix with MPs with his club.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
So it's not just staffers and public servants, but they'll
go along as well. But occasionally it'll be lobbyists, it'll
be people associated with peak sporting bodies. So for example,
you've got the AOC, the Australia Olympic Committee, Basketball Australia,
Football Australia, Golf Australia, Rugby Australia, the NRL. All of
(02:40):
these organizations have people that will go along to these things.
But you've also got members of the private sector as well.
So you've got companies like Cerca and Lion Group who
sell beers, and Pfizer and Pole, Amazon Web Services. All
these private organizations have some representation there too. And corporate
membership of this club starts at about two and a
half hour and dollars for well access to politicians.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So you've got corporates paying to come along and play
sport with politicians. And the club also has sponsors. What
can you tell me about that, Darnie.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Well, this is the most controversial part is one of
the sponsors of the parliament Sports Club is a group
called Responsible Way During Australia, they're the gambling lobby and
this is the most sort of egregious part of the
sports club and the most insidious part of the sports
club for a lot of people. So I asked Andy
(03:32):
Turnbull whether it was appropriate that this Parliamentary Sports Club
took that sponsorship, and he said that the club has
to date taken the view it must be agnostic with
respect to its corporate members and it's not for the
club to determine what is right or wrong in this
respect when its own parliamentary members have such wide and
diverse views on most matters. Currently, sports gambling is not
(03:54):
illegal nor a band activity, and it's not the club's
placed past judgment, especially so in light of the membership.
Now obviously that's deeply contested, but that is how the
club justifies taking money from the gambling lobby.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
And as you've reported that he this club has recently
registered as a lobby group. So what did Andy have
to say about that?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
So Andy's on his way out with retirement, and he
says that in order to sort of restructure the company
so that it survives beyond him, it needed to be
reregistered as a lobbying organization. But we spoke to David Pocock,
who obviously used to captain the Wallaby's, one of the
best back rowers of his generation, and he was hugely
(04:39):
disappointed when we contacted him and told him that the
club was now a lobby group. We spoke to Menique Ryan,
who for whatever, since she's committed in a previous life
as a carlt and supporter, and she said that she
was very upset by the fact that it had become
a registered lobby group, and she said it was a
reflection of the insidiousness and ubiquity of the game industry
(05:01):
that it has this sponsorship deal. So the extent to
which they do lobbying activities is somewhat contested, but I
mean it is really concerning to a lot of these
crossbench champagne that the government has these meetings, has this
(05:22):
mechanism by which you can pay for access to MPAs
and if you're a lobby group, it costs you two
and a half thousand dollars to access opinion leaders and
to access MPAs. And then on the other hand, you
have a government that hasn't done anything for more than
two years on its own report into gambling advertising reform.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Coming up that report and while the government still has
enacted that has now been more than two years since
the Murfiery Review was published and that was the result
that of inquiring to one gambling and advertising in Australia.
So can you tell me what it found and what
(06:04):
it recommended? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Absolutely, so the emphasis for the report is that Australians
are some of the biggest gambling losers in the world.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
We like to be the best in the world in Australia. Well,
Australians outspend the citizens of every other country on online gambling.
Online gambling is, of course a form of entertainment and
many people can talk about how they indulge in it
without experiencing harm or causing harm to others. But it
is different to other forms of entertainment because, as we
(06:35):
heard from the experts, it has the potential to cause psychological, health, relationship,
legal and financial harm to both the individuals engaging in
it and to those around them, and we heard tragically
about gambling being a key risk factor for suicide.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
The Murphy Report made dirty one recommendations, so things like
stopping the use of credit cards in life to online
sports gambling, some limitations on where and when sporting ads
can be shown around sporting events, but the biggest one
of those was Recommendation twenty six, which was that the
(07:13):
Government implement a comprehensive ban on all forms of advertising
for online gambling, to be introduced in four phases over
three years, commencing immediately.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Partial bands haven't worked well. Intended changes in twenty seventeen
and eighteen only led to the number of ads on
television increasing. Industries will identify and capitalize on gaps in
marketing restrictions and take advantage of arrests the less regulated
online environments.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
And where is the government up to on implementing these recommendations.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
It has been really, really slow. So this timeline is
kind of grim when you look at.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
It month by month.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Where the report came out in June twenty twenty three,
and when it came out, now bearing in mind this
was a review ordered by a labor government. Anthony Alberanzi
came out and said that sports gambling ads were reprehensible.
And then if you get to November of that year,
reports come out that Sports had posted Anthony Albanizi as
(08:15):
the National Press Club ahead of the prior election. So
in the lead up to twenty twenty two, and Michelle Roland,
who at the time as the Communications Minister, the relevant
Minister says that we might not go as far as
what the Murphy Report recommends. So this is in November
of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Why is this a complicated reform?
Speaker 5 (08:34):
From your perspective, why can't we just ban gambling ads online?
Thank you for your question, and it's one that is
often proposed.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
It's one that.
Speaker 5 (08:45):
Is used in relation to, for example, the banning of
tobacco ads many years ago. The reality is again, as
I outlined in my speech, over the years, the gambling
industry and sport, for example, the relationship has very much changed.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
We know. A month later, Peter Murphy passes away. She
had a long running battle with breast cancer, and not
even a week before she passed away, she'd sent remarks
she was working up until almost her literal dying breath
on gambling reform. It was very much an issue she
was very very passionate about. She sent remarks to David
Crowitz Sittney on Herald and said the evidence is clear
(09:27):
families hate the amount of sports betting their kids are
exposed to, were all worried about its impacts on people
and families, and David Crowe wrote about her that one
reason she worked so hard through her illness when others
would have stopped, was because she was on a mission
to tackle the social damage from gambling. This is something
she was very very passionate about up until her dying breath.
You fast forward to August of twenty twenty four and
(09:51):
a whole bunch of industry stakeholders, including sports Bet and Tayne,
who owned Ladbrokes, tab Corp, the NRL, the AFL, nine Entertainments,
Sean West. They all hold meetings secretly with Michelle Rowland's
office and they're all made to sign these non disclosure agreements,
which promptly get leaked anyway. But what we do know
(10:12):
from those meetings is that the government had proposed a
softer version of a gambling ad ban than what the
report recommended, So they were proposing a cap of two
gambling ads per hour on each channel until ten o'clock
and banning ads an hour before and after live sports
events as well as on social media that didn't get actioned.
(10:34):
We then get to October where Michelle Rowland says will
have a response by the end of the year. By
the end of the year, she says, we're not going
to be able to do this, And in January of
twenty twenty five we find out that they've said we're
not going to have any reformantal after the election. Where
now several months post election, Michelle Roland is no longer
the Communications Minister. It's now Anaka Wells and the line
(10:56):
from the government is that Anaka Wells is a new
minister and she's going to take some time to get
her feed under the table. The mail that we have
is that we might be looking at some reform after
the Spring Racing Carnival in late November. That will take
us to three years since the initial report was ordered Dannie.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
So if a bipartisan report with extensive research and clear
recommendations about how to reduce the harm of gambling, is
it enough for the government to do anything? What are
the other solutions? Are there any lessons to take from
sporting codes that aren't addicted to gambling revenue?
Speaker 2 (11:34):
So create Australia. When Osmond Kwaija did a recent run
of press in Parliament House said that they had a
relatively conservative position on sports gambling. It's a little bit nerdy,
but fundamentally the reason is there's lots of different ways
to bet on Aussie Rules and rugby league that aren't
available to you in cricket. So there's you can have.
(11:54):
You can bet on the number of tackles, you can
bet on the number of marks, you can bet on
the number of disposals anytime, tri score or whatever it
might be. With cricket, those array of markets aren't necessarily
available to you. And there's also a much more significant
concern with integrity in cricket in terms of spot fixing
and so on. We saw that sort of ten or
(12:15):
fifteen years ago in England and with the Pakistani creet team.
So that's part of the reason why Create Australia don't
really have the same relationship to gambling that for example,
the footy codes do. They really really love the revenue
(12:35):
that they get. They are absolutely all in and so
it's such an extraordinary amount of money Daniel that I
don't know what an alternate world looks like, but in
the interim you obviously have such significant harms to communities
affected by gambling advertising.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Danni, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Thank you so much for having me, Daniel.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Also in the news, Senior Liberal Melissa McIntosh Andrew Hasty's
decision to quit the front bench is understandable, saying his
concern over apparently out of control immigration is something her
constituents share. Macintosh says liberals like Hasty to send a
Naplejeper Price and Jane Hume belong on the coalition's front bench,
despite the fact that none of them currently are The
(13:33):
comments comment speculation about Andrew Hasty's leadership Ambition's mount We'll
have a full report with Caaren Middleton on seven AM
tomorrow and Industry Minister Tim Airs says Australia is currently
negotiating with the United States and the European Union on
a possible critical minerals deal. Minister Air says we have
all the critical minerals they require. Critical minerals are said
(13:55):
to be a key part of discussions when Anthony Albernezi
meets with Donald Trump on October t twenty. I'm Daniel James.
This is seven a m. Thanks for listening.
Every Wednesday morning during sitting weeks, Politicians, staffers, public servants
and journalists gather for a friendly game of sport. It's
meant to be casual, even wholesome. But recently that club,
the Parliament Sports Club, quietly reregistered as a lobbying organization.
Its board includes the Prime Minister, its members include representatives
(00:23):
from the major sporting codes, and one of its sponsors
is the gambling lobby. All of this is happening while
the government sits on a report they recommended a comprehensive
ban on gambling ads, a ban that experts say is
urgently needed to protect families and communities from the harms
of gambling. I'm Daniel James, and you're listening to seven
(00:48):
AM Today media reporter for Krikey Danny Sayid on how
a casual sporting meetup became a vehicle for lobbyists and
what it tells us about the gambling industry's grip on politics.
It's Monday, October six. Darnie, thanks for speaking with me.
(01:12):
You've been looking into the way this supposedly casual sports
meetup is being run. So what did you find out
about the club, how it's set up and he's involved.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
It's run by a guy called Andy Turnbull who has
been a registered lobbyist for more than fifteen years now
and has been involved in the Parliamentary Sports Club for
more than thirty years. He runs a sports events company
called sports Hydrant, and that is the organization that's been
responsible for running this club for the last thirty years
(01:43):
or so. And there's a lot of really high profile
name So the PM is the President of the parliament
Sports Club. Don Farrell is the chair. You've got these
old high profile MPAs. Joel Fitzgibbon is a director. He
used to be a Defense minister. Malcolm Bruff was a
minister in the Howard and Turnbull governments. He's on that
(02:04):
board of directors, so is Stuart Henry used to be
a Liberal member. Melmann Inger's on the Sports Advisory Board.
Obviously he had a very brief political run as well.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Tell me a bit more about some of the groups
that go along to mix with MPs with his club.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
So it's not just staffers and public servants, but they'll
go along as well. But occasionally it'll be lobbyists, it'll
be people associated with peak sporting bodies. So for example,
you've got the AOC, the Australia Olympic Committee, Basketball Australia,
Football Australia, Golf Australia, Rugby Australia, the NRL. All of
(02:40):
these organizations have people that will go along to these things.
But you've also got members of the private sector as well.
So you've got companies like Cerca and Lion Group who
sell beers, and Pfizer and Pole, Amazon Web Services. All
these private organizations have some representation there too. And corporate
membership of this club starts at about two and a
half hour and dollars for well access to politicians.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
So you've got corporates paying to come along and play
sport with politicians. And the club also has sponsors. What
can you tell me about that, Darnie.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Well, this is the most controversial part is one of
the sponsors of the parliament Sports Club is a group
called Responsible Way During Australia, they're the gambling lobby and
this is the most sort of egregious part of the
sports club and the most insidious part of the sports
club for a lot of people. So I asked Andy
(03:32):
Turnbull whether it was appropriate that this Parliamentary Sports Club
took that sponsorship, and he said that the club has
to date taken the view it must be agnostic with
respect to its corporate members and it's not for the
club to determine what is right or wrong in this
respect when its own parliamentary members have such wide and
diverse views on most matters. Currently, sports gambling is not
(03:54):
illegal nor a band activity, and it's not the club's
placed past judgment, especially so in light of the membership.
Now obviously that's deeply contested, but that is how the
club justifies taking money from the gambling lobby.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
And as you've reported that he this club has recently
registered as a lobby group. So what did Andy have
to say about that?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
So Andy's on his way out with retirement, and he
says that in order to sort of restructure the company
so that it survives beyond him, it needed to be
reregistered as a lobbying organization. But we spoke to David Pocock,
who obviously used to captain the Wallaby's, one of the
best back rowers of his generation, and he was hugely
(04:39):
disappointed when we contacted him and told him that the
club was now a lobby group. We spoke to Menique Ryan,
who for whatever, since she's committed in a previous life
as a carlt and supporter, and she said that she
was very upset by the fact that it had become
a registered lobby group, and she said it was a
reflection of the insidiousness and ubiquity of the game industry
(05:01):
that it has this sponsorship deal. So the extent to
which they do lobbying activities is somewhat contested, but I
mean it is really concerning to a lot of these
crossbench champagne that the government has these meetings, has this
(05:22):
mechanism by which you can pay for access to MPAs
and if you're a lobby group, it costs you two
and a half thousand dollars to access opinion leaders and
to access MPAs. And then on the other hand, you
have a government that hasn't done anything for more than
two years on its own report into gambling advertising reform.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Coming up that report and while the government still has
enacted that has now been more than two years since
the Murfiery Review was published and that was the result
that of inquiring to one gambling and advertising in Australia.
So can you tell me what it found and what
(06:04):
it recommended? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Absolutely, so the emphasis for the report is that Australians
are some of the biggest gambling losers in the world.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
We like to be the best in the world in Australia. Well,
Australians outspend the citizens of every other country on online gambling.
Online gambling is, of course a form of entertainment and
many people can talk about how they indulge in it
without experiencing harm or causing harm to others. But it
is different to other forms of entertainment because, as we
(06:35):
heard from the experts, it has the potential to cause psychological, health, relationship,
legal and financial harm to both the individuals engaging in
it and to those around them, and we heard tragically
about gambling being a key risk factor for suicide.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
The Murphy Report made dirty one recommendations, so things like
stopping the use of credit cards in life to online
sports gambling, some limitations on where and when sporting ads
can be shown around sporting events, but the biggest one
of those was Recommendation twenty six, which was that the
(07:13):
Government implement a comprehensive ban on all forms of advertising
for online gambling, to be introduced in four phases over
three years, commencing immediately.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Partial bands haven't worked well. Intended changes in twenty seventeen
and eighteen only led to the number of ads on
television increasing. Industries will identify and capitalize on gaps in
marketing restrictions and take advantage of arrests the less regulated
online environments.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
And where is the government up to on implementing these recommendations.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
It has been really, really slow. So this timeline is
kind of grim when you look at.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
It month by month.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Where the report came out in June twenty twenty three,
and when it came out, now bearing in mind this
was a review ordered by a labor government. Anthony Alberanzi
came out and said that sports gambling ads were reprehensible.
And then if you get to November of that year,
reports come out that Sports had posted Anthony Albanizi as
(08:15):
the National Press Club ahead of the prior election. So
in the lead up to twenty twenty two, and Michelle Roland,
who at the time as the Communications Minister, the relevant
Minister says that we might not go as far as
what the Murphy Report recommends. So this is in November
of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
Why is this a complicated reform?
Speaker 5 (08:34):
From your perspective, why can't we just ban gambling ads online?
Thank you for your question, and it's one that is
often proposed.
Speaker 1 (08:44):
It's one that.
Speaker 5 (08:45):
Is used in relation to, for example, the banning of
tobacco ads many years ago. The reality is again, as
I outlined in my speech, over the years, the gambling
industry and sport, for example, the relationship has very much changed.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
We know. A month later, Peter Murphy passes away. She
had a long running battle with breast cancer, and not
even a week before she passed away, she'd sent remarks
she was working up until almost her literal dying breath
on gambling reform. It was very much an issue she
was very very passionate about. She sent remarks to David
Crowitz Sittney on Herald and said the evidence is clear
(09:27):
families hate the amount of sports betting their kids are
exposed to, were all worried about its impacts on people
and families, and David Crowe wrote about her that one
reason she worked so hard through her illness when others
would have stopped, was because she was on a mission
to tackle the social damage from gambling. This is something
she was very very passionate about up until her dying breath.
You fast forward to August of twenty twenty four and
(09:51):
a whole bunch of industry stakeholders, including sports Bet and Tayne,
who owned Ladbrokes, tab Corp, the NRL, the AFL, nine Entertainments,
Sean West. They all hold meetings secretly with Michelle Rowland's
office and they're all made to sign these non disclosure agreements,
which promptly get leaked anyway. But what we do know
(10:12):
from those meetings is that the government had proposed a
softer version of a gambling ad ban than what the
report recommended, So they were proposing a cap of two
gambling ads per hour on each channel until ten o'clock
and banning ads an hour before and after live sports
events as well as on social media that didn't get actioned.
(10:34):
We then get to October where Michelle Rowland says will
have a response by the end of the year. By
the end of the year, she says, we're not going
to be able to do this, And in January of
twenty twenty five we find out that they've said we're
not going to have any reformantal after the election. Where
now several months post election, Michelle Roland is no longer
the Communications Minister. It's now Anaka Wells and the line
(10:56):
from the government is that Anaka Wells is a new
minister and she's going to take some time to get
her feed under the table. The mail that we have
is that we might be looking at some reform after
the Spring Racing Carnival in late November. That will take
us to three years since the initial report was ordered Dannie.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
So if a bipartisan report with extensive research and clear
recommendations about how to reduce the harm of gambling, is
it enough for the government to do anything? What are
the other solutions? Are there any lessons to take from
sporting codes that aren't addicted to gambling revenue?
Speaker 2 (11:34):
So create Australia. When Osmond Kwaija did a recent run
of press in Parliament House said that they had a
relatively conservative position on sports gambling. It's a little bit nerdy,
but fundamentally the reason is there's lots of different ways
to bet on Aussie Rules and rugby league that aren't
available to you in cricket. So there's you can have.
(11:54):
You can bet on the number of tackles, you can
bet on the number of marks, you can bet on
the number of disposals anytime, tri score or whatever it
might be. With cricket, those array of markets aren't necessarily
available to you. And there's also a much more significant
concern with integrity in cricket in terms of spot fixing
and so on. We saw that sort of ten or
(12:15):
fifteen years ago in England and with the Pakistani creet team.
So that's part of the reason why Create Australia don't
really have the same relationship to gambling that for example,
the footy codes do. They really really love the revenue
(12:35):
that they get. They are absolutely all in and so
it's such an extraordinary amount of money Daniel that I
don't know what an alternate world looks like, but in
the interim you obviously have such significant harms to communities
affected by gambling advertising.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Danni, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Thank you so much for having me, Daniel.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
Also in the news, Senior Liberal Melissa McIntosh Andrew Hasty's
decision to quit the front bench is understandable, saying his
concern over apparently out of control immigration is something her
constituents share. Macintosh says liberals like Hasty to send a
Naplejeper Price and Jane Hume belong on the coalition's front bench,
despite the fact that none of them currently are The
(13:33):
comments comment speculation about Andrew Hasty's leadership Ambition's mount We'll
have a full report with Caaren Middleton on seven AM
tomorrow and Industry Minister Tim Airs says Australia is currently
negotiating with the United States and the European Union on
a possible critical minerals deal. Minister Air says we have
all the critical minerals they require. Critical minerals are said
(13:55):
to be a key part of discussions when Anthony Albernezi
meets with Donald Trump on October t twenty. I'm Daniel James.
This is seven a m. Thanks for listening.
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