The Albanese Government tabled its formal response to the House of Representatives Standing Committee inquiry into online gambling harm on Tuesday 12 May 2026, releasing the long-awaited document on Budget Day. The inquiry, chaired by the late Peta Murphy in 2023, had delivered 31 recommendations including a phased full ban on online wagering advertising. The Government's response addresses 18 of those recommendations directly and accepts most of them in modified form, while declining to commit to the full advertising ban that the inquiry had treated as its centrepiece.
What the Government Has Agreed
The legislative package commences 1 January 2027 and brings six principal measures. First, restrictions on wagering advertising, including the cap of three gambling ads per hour on free-to-air television between 6am and 8:30pm, the full ban during live sports broadcasts, prohibitions on celebrities and athletes appearing in promotions, removal of in-stadia advertising, and the end of odds-style advertising. Second, expanded enforcement against illegal online gambling, including working with banks to block financial transactions to unlicensed operators, automated ACMA blocking, and capturing social media platforms in the ban on advertising illegal gambling. Third, strengthened BetStop integration with cost-recovery from industry. Fourth, addressing harmful online lottery products, including a total ban on online keno effective 2027. Fifth, doubled financial counselling support for gambling harm. Sixth, a national public awareness and education campaign focused on those most at risk.
The Government has also committed to making match-fixing a Commonwealth criminal offence, consistent with the Macolin Convention, and to expanded scope of the digital platforms' takedown obligations for illegal gambling content. All measures pursue compliance with the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 amendment that begins 1 January 2027, with the ACMA designated as the responsible enforcement body.
The Reaction From Anti-Gambling Advocates
The Australian Greens and the Independent crossbench have framed the response as inadequate. The ABC reported that the Government had been accused of "burying" the response by tabling it on Budget Day, when media coverage is dominated by federal budget announcements. The Alliance for Gambling Reform issued a one-line public statement that the response "falls short of what the late Peta Murphy fought for". The Wagering Council and other industry voices have generally welcomed the package as the more workable framework. The cost-benefit analysis published last fortnight by the Office of Impact Analysis showed the chosen Option 2 reforms will reduce annual wagering expenditure by $62.7 million per year, versus $109.5 million under a full ban.
For licensed operators including dabble, Ladbrokes, bet365, Neds and Picklebet, the package is a confirmed implementation runway rather than an unknown. Each operator's marketing function has had since 2 April 2026 to plan around the wagering advertising changes. The BetStop integration requirements and the financial-transaction-blocking framework will create new compliance costs for operators but no operator names are at risk of losing licences from the package as tabled.
Where the Markets Land
The signal for the licensed wagering market is straightforward. The Government has rejected the full ban that would have reduced sector revenue by an additional 0.6 per cent, equivalent to about $44 million per year of harm reduction left on the table. Operators retain a viable marketing surface with substantially reduced saturation, and the 18-month implementation runway means the package is priced into 2026-2027 commercial planning. The most significant variable for Tabcorp, Entain and Sportsbet remains the AUSTRAC and ACMA enforcement files, not the legislative package.
The full Government response, the legislative package summary and the Senet Group analysis are available at infrastructure.gov.au.