2GB Ray Hadley
RAY HADLEY:
Minister good morning.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Good morning Ray.
HADLEY:
You are announcing a review into illegal offshore gambling. Now I mean no disrespect about this but I would think that you would never have had a bet in your life, would that be right?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Maybe the odd cup sweep mate but that’s about it. It hasn’t been a big part of my sort of socialising. But I know it is for many Australians – three quarters of Australians like to have a punt, it is part of our recreational pastime. My grandfather liked to have a punt and listen to the races on a Saturday afternoon so it is what many Australians do – that’s fine. But for two per cent of Australians – some over 400,000 Australians gambling is a really big problem and particularly for blokes.
HADLEY:
Yeah not just on the horses or the greyhounds or the trots. I mean casinos play a role in all of this as well. We understand that. But I speak from a different perspective as someone who gambled until five years ago and stopped. Through that time as a race caller and someone who frequented race courses I ran into many, many people whose lives changed because of an obsession, an addiction, to gambling and anyone who thinks it is not an addiction hasn’t seen someone in a grip of that addiction as I have.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Yeah look it is a terrible curse for those for whom it’s a problem. For the vast majority of Australians it’s not and that’s a good thing. But that doesn’t matter people can’t fall victim to it or have a risk to it, particularly in the online area. If you go to a club or pub or track or casino there are, some would argue not strong enough protections in place, but certainly there are protections in place, there are rules that have to be followed. And it is in a social place where you are with other people and your behaviour can be observed. The online gambling sector is quite different. We all know problem gamblers like to hide their addiction and some two-thirds of us who know someone who has such an addiction it is not a family member; it is a mate, a work colleague, a client or someone like that. So the families are often the last to know. We have got to be sure the online gambling area is at least having as many protections as there are for those who are going along to a track or other places. We are not trying to shut down gambling but we are trying to make it safe and protect those who can be very vulnerable because it is not just them who are affected it is their families who are affected and in social services we see that every day.
HADLEY:
There are two ways people get themselves into strife on the punt; either steal money from their employer or they bid on the nod. Now for those who don’t know anything about gambling, betting on the nod means credit. You bet with bookmakers who extend you credit and the more you get in the more you chase. So you can have the capacity to lose $2000 and lose $20,000. You can have the capacity to lose $20,000 and lose $200,000 or $2 million. So what people need to understand here we have legal entities and there are many of them and you can bet on the tennis, the golf, the rugby league, horse racing and any other sport – even on politics if you wish, on who is going to win this or that. But you’re focusing on what you are calling illegal offshore gambling. Now can you explain to our listeners what you mean by illegal offshore gambling?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Now particularly on the wagering side this is things like in-play betting. It is being done offshore; it is illegal to do it in Australia. We have some 30 odd operators who can run legal online interactive gaming in Australia and that is the things that they are allowed to do but there are more than 2,000 sites offshore that are providing services that are illegal in Australia. Now about $1.6 billion, or thereabouts, is being spent in this area in total and about 60 per cent of that is going offshore and there are no protections for that offshore, there is no certainty about consumer protections as well and the insidious nature of how these things can infiltrate people’s lives is also unprotected.
HADLEY:
How do you know you are going to get paid if you do win?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well this is all true, but if you have got an addition and you are right into this then these risks diminish.
HADLEY:
So how does it work? You put a credit card in and you get your money there and then wager with that money you have got in via a credit card, is that how it works?
MINISTER MORRISON:
That’s right and we are going to be looking – and we are appointing Barry O’Farrell today, the former NSW Premier, to undertake the review over the next few months and they are going to be looking at all these things. All those companies too that are doing this offshore and providing all that in-play stuff that also has the great potential to undermine the integrity of sport as we know as well, those pay no product fees to the codes or to the racing industry or anything like that. So they are making hundreds of millions of dollars out of Australian activities. So there are revenue issues there but from my point of you Ray we are at a stage at the moment with online gaming where I think we can do the right thing and ensure that people are protected going into the future. We don’t want to see happen what has happened in other areas of gambling where frankly it has got to a level now with pokies and things like that where it is very difficult to try and make changes. It was a long time ago when the pokie machines went everywhere and they were decisions made by others at another time. I am not revisiting that but right now I am finding with those that are in the interactive gaming sector that there is a willingness to engage and make sure that this is safe for Australians and that is what we want to make sure of.
HADLEY:
Ok well you have a good man to do it, Barry O’Farrell. Now Newspoll out today in The Australian, Labor still holds an election winning lead 54-46 on two party preferred, that is with the help of the Greens. Inexplicably the Prime Minister still four points behind Bill Shorten as preferred Prime Minister, although satisfaction with the Opposition Leader has taken a significant hit. How would you describe your first two years in office given the poll that was released today?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Busy and effective. Stopped the boats, got rid of the Carbon Tax, got rid of the Mining Tax, got rid of the deposits tax which we only announced last week. We have been able to back small business particularly with our instant asset right off. We have been able to free up our refugee and humanitarian programme where there are around 4,500 places that previously weren’t available under the programme which were freed up and we have obviously been employing a lot of those places to deal with the crisis in Syria and Iraq. Our intake of Syrian and Iraqi refugees last year before everything people have seen on their screens over the last week or so and that is a terrible thing to be seeing – we had already increased it by over 1,000 places, by a third.
HADLEY:
Did you read Andrew Bolt’s report today about that poor little fella that died, the three year old?
MINISTER MORRISON:
I haven’t got to it yet, no.
HADLEY:
Well I shared it with my listeners because I wasn’t aware of it, he had in fact been since his birth I understand in Turkey. His parents had been there from Syria and they had been there for almost three years. The father is quoted as saying that he wanted to get to Germany where apparently there is free dental. So I mean we have to be – it is terrible when a child dies.
MINISTER MORRISON:
It is terrible.
HADLEY:
You can’t mitigate it or explain it but to describe him as a death because he wanted to escape oppression from IS and all the rest of it – they got out of there three years ago – from the Syrian town where IS now have a strong hold.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well any child dying is a tragedy and you just mentioned the child in that terrible incident up in Brisbane. This is the 25th year of National Child Protection Week and I will be having a bit more to say about that later today with NAPCAN who do a great job but these scenes are horrific. These scenes we have seen before sadly at various points in time where there are massive conflicts. We certainly saw it with the Cambodian and Vietnamese refugee crisis many years ago and Australia stepped up then. Australia will step up again now and one of the reasons we are able to step up like we have already been doing for the past year at least is because we have been able to secure the integrity of our own borders. That has had the compassionate dividend of us freeing up 4,500 places in our programme right now. We have already acted by increasing our intake for those from those distressed areas by around about a third increase. Our intake will increase again as when I was Immigration Minister, it will go up by another 2,500 another 5,000 over the forward estimates and the Prime Minister and Minister Dutton are obviously working through the current issues that we are addressing in Europe at the moment.
HADLEY:
It is a crisis. We have hundreds of thousands of people if not millions of people trying to access facilities in other parts of the world and I don’t know what the answer is, I simply don’t know. It’s just overwhelming.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well I think in the first instance though – I am sure this is one of the things Peter will be focusing on when he is there, there is the issues of – I mean you have a mass movement of people and for Europe that means ensuring that there is medical facilities and treatment available, that there is provision of food and accommodation and things like that. You have got to deal with the first immediate needs of a crisis like this and I know we often talk about resettlement places and they are part of the mix. But right now with hundreds of thousands of people on the move then there is a need to address some of the immediate needs that are there and I am sure Peter will be making a positive contribution to those discussions.
HADLEY:
Channel Nine last night with Lane Calcutt the Prime Minister wouldn’t rule out a shuffle in Cabinet. It is not all that uncommon for it to happen at the end of the year. Do you think that that may happen?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Well he has certainly indicated that over a number of years now. That’s for him, he’s the selector, he’s not just the chairman of selectors, he is all of the selectors in one.
HADLEY:
Captain, coach and sole selector?
MINISTER MORRISON:
Absolutely and that is the province of the Prime Minister. They are his calls and the rest of us do our jobs as best as we possibly can in a bid to do the right thing for the Australian people, and if the selectors – the selector, looks kindly on that, well, that’s a matter for him.
HADLEY:
Ok, News Ltd quoted you yesterday as saying “Parents no longer have an option of staying home and looking after their children if they want to own a home.” Now as the proud father of children about to embark on marriages and…
MINISTER MORRISON:
Did they look after you yesterday mate?
HADLEY:
Yes, they did. I got a voucher from my youngest to go and buy a new pair of shoes. It is something that you should start thinking about I have noticed some of the shoes you wear in the studio. Not today because I can’t see your feet but you need to get a bit more trendy. There is a shop that I found in Hawaii called – I think it is called Sketchers it’s in Australia as well and they are very – I mean they take years off you. In your case you would look like a 25 year old and I look like a 40 year old at the moment because I have got my Sketchers shoes on today. But anyway I felt like saying when I read it “thanks Scoop” – without meaning to offend you. You said that two people have to be in a job if they are going to afford a house and that is just the sad reality. But having said that it was the same in 1962 when my mum and dad came out of housing commission for a ?3,000 home in Dundas Valley they had to both work as well.
MINISTER MORRISON:
It has always been hard Ray and that is true. People were buying smaller homes then and weren’t buying larger homes and things like that but the numbers don’t lie and the numbers are simply this – the average mortgage payment as a percentage of the average household income for people aged under 44 has doubled since 1981 so they are spending twice as much as a percentage of their household income as they were 30 years ago. The other thing that has changed is that the percentage of families that are buying homes who are single income two parent families has gone from one in two to less than one in five. So they are just what has happened and there are a lot of other things that are driving those changes, particularly in Sydney we have always known it is hard to buy a house. One of the other things we have seen in places like Brisbane in particularly, particularly for those under the age of 35, there has been quote a sharp drop off in home ownership amongst those families as well. Where once upon a time it was a bit easier in some of the other cities but it has certainly levelled out now. Owning a home I think is one of the great Australian aspirations and we have to keep that dream alive.
HADLEY:
Ok, thanks very much for your time as always.
MINISTER MORRISON:
Thanks Ray. Good to be with you.