This Is About Our Kids Now

Mark Kempster

I grew up next door to a park. My brothers and I spent every spare moment out there playing footy and cricket, completely absorbed in sport. It was pure. It was everything.

I want that for my son. I want him to love sport the way I did — for the game, the competition, the joy of it.

But I'm terrified that by the time he's old enough to watch a game with me, he won't be able to separate sport from gambling. Because right now, neither can I. And I know exactly what that costs a person.

What Gambling Did to Me

I downloaded my first betting app at 21. By 23, I had ten different betting company apps on my phone. By 25, I was betting three to four days a week. By 30, every single day.

Over ten years, I lost more than $100,000 — along with a significant portion of my superannuation, and very nearly my relationship, my family, and myself.

I became a shell of the person I once was. Angry. Vindictive. I wanted people to feel as awful as I did.

What made it so insidious was the marketing. The sheer volume of communication I received from gambling companies made everything a blur. I could place a bet within 20 seconds of receiving a promotional email, without thinking, without choosing. They had trained me. They had rewired the way my brain worked.

That's not an accident. That's a business model.

Then I Became a Father

When my son was born, something shifted. The stakes became very different.

I have now been gambling-free for five and a half years. I fought hard for that. But every time I turn on the TV to watch the sport I love, I'm confronted by the same tactics that nearly destroyed me — now aimed squarely at the next generation.

Australian children are exposed to more than one million gambling advertisements every year. Every. Year.

They see them during the footy. During the cricket. Scrolling through social media. Embedded in the fabric of sport itself, the thing my son is just beginning to love.

I cannot shield him from it. I can turn off the TV. I can monitor his screen time. But I cannot opt my child out of an industry that has been given free rein to recruit the next generation of customers.

As a parent, that helplessness is devastating.

The Government Knows How to Act — When It Wants To

Here is what makes me so frustrated, and frankly, so angry.

Our government recently moved to restrict children's access to social media, recognising that platforms were causing real harm to young Australians. That action was welcomed by parents across the country. When children are at risk, government has both the power and the responsibility to step in.

So why is gambling advertising different?

Children are watching more than a million gambling ads a year. The evidence of harm is overwhelming. A parliamentary inquiry, the Murphy Report, has already done the work, producing 31 clear recommendations for reform, including a ban on gambling advertising.

That was over two and a half years ago.

I gave evidence at that inquiry. I sat in that room and watched politicians read submission after submission from families who had lost loved ones to gambling addiction. Not one person in that room could have walked away without understanding the urgency.

And still, we wait.

This Is About Our Kids Now

I was preyed upon by this industry from the age of 21. I don't want my son to face what I faced. I don't want him to grow up in a country where the profits of large overseas gambling companies are placed ahead of the health and safety of its children.

The government has proven it can act decisively to protect young Australians online. Gambling advertising demands that same urgency. Because right now, every weekend, every game, every scroll through a feed is another opportunity for this industry to get its hooks into the next generation.

I am one of the lucky ones. I got out. I got help. I rebuilt my life.

But I shouldn't have to spend every day as a parent fearing that the same industry that nearly took everything from me is now being handed a direct line to my son.

Prime Minister Albanese, you still have time to change this. Ban gambling advertising. Implement all 31 recommendations of the Murphy Report.

Do it for the parents who are powerless to protect their children without your help. Do it for the kids who deserve to love sport without being recruited into addiction.

Do it so that no child grows up to become who I was.