How shrinking legacy media became captives of the gambling industry

This article is an instalment in a new series, Punted, on the government’s failure to reform gambling advertising.

Peter Dutton’s modest proposal to further restrict gambling advertising on television during live sporting broadcasts was perhaps the most interesting policy thought bubble of his debut budget reply speech last year.

But it’s been crickets from Dutton and his Coalition colleagues ever since. Until the weekend, that is, when Labor’s mooted set of half-baked regulatory changes were leaked to the Nine papers. Dutton joined the pile-on on the Albanese government, which has seemingly baulked at embracing the popular proposal to implement a tobacco-style advertising ban on an industry that takes $25 billion from Australians each year.

Labor had been given a blueprint for reducing gambling harm in the form of the 31 recommendations of the