News and politics recap: Pat Conaghan and Andrew Wallace vote against gambling ad reforms

That’s all for our federal politics live coverage for today.

Recap on all of today’s action as it happened below.

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Labor’s gambling advertising bill has passed the lower house, three years after a Labor-led inquiry called for an end to online gambling ads.

The bill introduces an opt-out system for online gambling advertising, restricts ads during children’s programming and extends the live sport blackout period to 15 minutes before games.

Coalition MPs Pat Conaghan and Andrew Wallace joined the crossbench in voting against the bill.

The legislation now moves to the Senate, where the Coalition will support its passage.

Shadow Technology Minister Aaron Violi has warned cutting cigarette prices will not end Australia’s illicit tobacco trade.

One Nation has proposed cutting cigarette prices by 75 per cent and freezing indexation for three years to make the black market unprofitable.

Violi said the price gap between legal and illicit tobacco needed to be addressed, but warned a tax cut alone would not dismantle criminal networks.

“They’ve set up infrastructure, they’ve set up stores, they’re not just going to pack up and go home,” Violi said.

Australians will soon have more options to avoid gambling advertising after Labor and the Coalition agreed to pass contentious reforms.

The changes include a one-stop shop to opt out of online betting ads, limits on commissions for betting agents and restrictions on incentives for punters. Betting ads will also be banned from stadiums, jerseys and during live sport.

Broadcast restrictions will begin at 5am and run until 8.30pm, with the daytime blackout extended to 15 minutes before sporting broadcasts.

The reforms will be reviewed three years after taking effect.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the amendments would better protect people at risk of gambling harm, including through a ban on direct inducements within 90 days of joining the BetStop self-exclusion register.

“Australians will be better protected from inducements and direct marketing,” Albanese told parliament.

Opposition communications spokesperson Sarah Henderson said the deal was a Coalition win, arguing Labor’s original bill did not do enough to protect children and vulnerable Australians.

Read more.

The Albanese Government’s controversial plan to massively reform the NDIS by cracking down on fraud and booting more than 100,000 people from the scheme will likely pass into law after finding support from the Coalition.

Health Minister Mark Butler said on Tuesday afternoon the government was confident the National Disability Insurance Scheme Amendment (Securing the NDIS for Future Generations) Bill 2026 would pass the Senate that night.

It will then return to the lower house where Labor has a sweeping majority.

Mr Butler said the Bill would face some 63 amendments – 30 already from the lower house, and 33 from the upper house.

The changes had been “negotiated largely with the Coalition”, he said.

Read more.

Nationals MP Pat Conaghan and independent senator David Pocock have criticised the government’s gambling advertising legislation, arguing it will not prevent online gambling inducements.

Conaghan crossed the floor to oppose amendments to the bill, saying it was only “marginally” better than initially proposed and left wagering companies to police risky gambling behaviour.

“It leaves the fox in the henhouse,” Conaghan said, arguing the industry had failed to protect customers in the past.

Mr Pocock said vested interests were influencing the major parties and confirmed he would vote against the bill in the Senate.

He called the legislation a betrayal of Australians and said it was a missed opportunity to treat gambling as a public health issue.

“We have this opportunity as a parliament to implement evidence-based policy and actually treat gambling as the public health issue that it is,” Mr Pocock said.

NDIS Minister Jenny McAllister says legislation expected to pass the Senate tonight will deliver a “strong, safe and sustainable” NDIS.

Amendments include an escalation pathway allowing high-risk participants to apply for plan variations, as well as new measures targeting fraud.

“We will move amendments that deliver new criminal and civil penalties for offering or providing a kickback,” McAllister said.

The bill is expected to pass with Coalition support, but the Greens warn the changes could leave hundreds of thousands without support.

“This bill represents the end of the NDIS as it was promised and as we have known it,” Greens senator Jordon Steele-John said.

Resources Minister Madeleine King has slammed the Productivity Commission’s interim report on the GST carve-up as “quite wrong.”

The report into the WA GST deal, called it a “costly mistake” and recommended the government scrap it.

Ms King, who is from WA, says she doesn’t think the interim report has much credibility.

“What I was most disappointed is that the commission itself didn’t really reflect at all on some of the ideas that have come out of other places, in particular WA who is the most affected by this,” Ms King says.

“So that’s disappointing and I totally understand the disappointment, of Premier Roger Cook and Deputy Premier Rita Saffioti.”

Resources Minister Madeleine King has welcomed the Pentagon’s investment in a scandium project in central western NSW.

The US Department of War is investing $560 million in the project i, in a move Resources Minister Madeleine King says will strengthen supply chains and Australia’s national security.

Scandium is a critical mineral used in aerospace, defence and automotive sectors, with nearly all global supply currently coming from China, Russia and Ukraine.

Speaking to Afternoon Briefing, King welcomed the investment.

“It is a very good thing. It’s exactly the kind of investment we want, indeed, that we have been pressing the United States and other like-minded partners to take part in Australia,” King said.

She said the investment would help the US secure its supply chains and strengthen Australia’s national security.

Housing Minister Clare O’Neil has backed treasury forecasts that the government’s decision to remove property tax concessions will have a “negligible” impact on rents despite warnings from NAB.

The big four bank argued that property prices will need to fall, rents will need to rise, or a combination of both, as investors reasses the returns required to justify investing in existing properties.

But treasury expects the tax changes to have a “negligible” impact on rents, while forecasting continued growth in property prices.

“With regard to the impact of the tax changes on renters, the parliament is also very well versed in this. We talked about this in Budget week. The Treasury has looked at the government’s policy and the advice is there will be a negligible impact on rents,” she said.

“This is a crisis today which is hurting literally millions of people who live in our country. We see that for renters, who are living with a housing insecurity and rising rents in a way that should never be happening in a country like Australia.

“They’re in a situation where they’re insecure in many of their tenancies, rents are rising too fast and too frequently, and for many of them, they live with that agonising experience of the thing they want most of all, home ownership, moving further and further away from them.”