My wife is currently in Africa filming a documentary about rhinos.
Which means I’m home alone on the farm with four kids. The wild Savannah has nothing on this.
“The teachers said Book Week is coming up”, announced my eight-year old daughter over dinner.
“I want to go as The Cat in the Hat!” squealed my five-year-old.
My nostrils flared. In that moment I felt a bit like a rhino myself: cornered, cranky, and ready to charge.
“You’re all going as … me”, I declared. “We’ve got the books. The checked shirts. And you can all take turns with Lucky the sheepdog.”
“But Daaad.”
Then my phone rang. It was Wally, my editor.
“Did you hear? The Prime Minister quoted you in Parliament today. He basically read your last column out word for word.”
“Wally”, I said. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“After 22 years working with you”, he replied, “I can confidently say I am almost certainly not.”
Here’s what I was thinking.
If the Prime Minister likes my column so much, let’s see if he’ll read this one out in Parliament.
I looked around the kitchen at my four little rhinos, one still wearing mashed potato on his snout. Their mum is over in Africa because there are men who slaughter rare, defenceless animals just because there’s money in it.
Well, we’ve got poachers here too. Except they’re not hunting rhinos … they’re hunting our kids.
They’re the betting companies.
They use the thing kids (particularly boys) love – sport – to groom them into gambling. Logos on the jersey. Ads on the TV. And odds in their ears before they’re old enough to shave.
Jackpot!
Per head, we lose more money on gambling than any other nation on earth.
Albo, I don’t have the money that the gambling lobbyists do to host a private donors’ dinner with you.
Yet let me tell you, Book Week is about kids dressing up as characters from a story, but the real story this week is the one our current gambling laws are letting them walk into.
It sure looks like you’re not on the right side of the debate. Otherwise you’d treat these punting poachers like the cigarette companies. You’d ban them from sport completely. No jerseys. No stadiums. No ads at the footy.
Albo, I’m totally outnumbered here at home. My wife has flown to the other side of the world to stand between the poachers and something that couldn’t fight back. You could protect my rhinos and you wouldn’t even have to leave the building.
Tread Your Own Path!