Harm done now can be harm forever; how government delay can derail lives

August 24, 2026 — 6:25am

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Rod Glover, whose late wife, Peta Murphy, chaired the committee that delivered the report into online gambling that drove so much of the later debate, issued a statement last week after the government had passed its legislation. He began by strongly emphasising hope. Glover did not want the flaws in what had been done to prevent recognition of “progress”, a “big improvement on the status quo”. That progress was a reminder that agreement could still be reached in politics – which may in turn, he suggested, be a way of rebuilding trust in democracy.

But Glover, who has been restrained in his public commentary, was also transparent about its shortcomings: it was “far from everything that is needed” and fell “well short of the Murphy Report recommendations”. This was a sign of the power of those lobbying against change, which demonstrated a “failure of social leadership among some of our major sporting and media institutions”.

Glover also said it “has taken too long to get here. That delay has had real human consequences”.

Those last three words are quietly devastating, if you take a minute to consider their meaning: the lives that have been derailed in the time governments did not act. They reminded me of something written by philosopher Luara Ferracioli about inequality and the pace at which governments address it. For a government, waiting a year or two can seem inconsequential. In a life, those years can be decisive. As Ferracioli writes,........

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