Sabra Lane: I say it’s sport and politics don’t mix but the Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja is going to try this week. The star is travelling to Parliament House to pressure the Prime Minister to adopt all 31 recommendations from a two-year-old report into gambling harms. That report was called You Win Some, You Lose More. He will join independent Senator David Pocock seeking further change. He will also pressure Anthony Albanese to take more action in the Gaza-Israel war. He joined me earlier. Usman Khawaja, thank you for talking to AM. Many Australians will think this morning you should stick to cricket. Why are you entering the political fray on gambling reforms in Palestine?

Usman Khawaja: I don’t think I really am. I mean first of all sport and politics it’s a bizarre people say it. I just I feel they’re a little bit ignorant. My whole life sport and politics have mixed. I shook probably more hands with Prime Ministers and Presidents maybe even you, Sabra. I’ve been everywhere and they’re always around, always around cricket. I mean I even shook hands with a Queen before a match. So the people say sport and politics don’t mix. I find that a bit strange but this isn’t political. It’s not political for me at all. I mean I think gambling is something that we need to be very conscious of first and foremost especially to our younger generation.

Sabra Lane: Let’s talk about the gambling first. You’re meeting with the Prime Minister later this week. There was an inquiry two years ago by a Labor MP and it was unanimous. It had 31 recommendations. The government has acted upon some of them. What would you ask Mr Albanese to do?

Usman Khawaja: I mean I think the biggest thing for us is responsibility to the younger generation. I mean when I watch an NRL game and I love footy, go the Raiders, I see gambling every single time before I watch a game. I see the odds every single time before I watch a game. I’ve been obviously involved with sport a long long time. There’s obviously anecdotally on my point of view but I just see kids watching sport and they just want to watch sport because they love the sport. The thrill of winning and losing and supporting the team is enough. Nowadays I’m seeing 15, 16 year olds with betting accounts going out there and they feel like they have to bet to go at sport. And sport and bet, betting just go together which is a bizarre way of how the shifts happened. And there’s a lot of pitfalls to gambling. So if we’re desensitizing a younger generation to those pitfalls and then putting it in front of their faces over and over and over again without making them realize what the actual consequences of gambling can actually be, it can be a very slippery slope.

Sabra Lane: So what are you seeking? You want a ban on advertising at grounds and on TV?

Usman Khawaja: I mean I think we need to be more conscious of it 100%. I mean obviously I’m a cricketer. I work with Cricket Australia. I’m on the board of the ACA. I’ve mentioned this to the ACA on numerous occasions. I think we need to do more. I think we need to do something which we’re responsible for how the game advertises. Obviously I’m a bit more hard-lined and I would love to have very little gambling or gambling ads during sporting events. But I think that one probably one that has to work with the organisers and sport in general Australia and the government to find out what is the best way to protect our younger generation.

Sabra Lane: As I understand it you’ll also use the opportunity to talk with Mr Albanese about the Gaza-Israel war. What more can the government do given that there are already a significant number of Australians who say the government’s gone too far for example with plans to recognise a Palestinian state?

Usman Khawaja: I mean that in itself is bizarre. The biggest thing with Palestinians is Palestinians are people. You can’t treat them like people unless you recognise them as people. That’s what I felt like since my childhood. I mean people just were fine with Palestinians dying, with children dying. Even at the start when I started talking about it, children dying over there were fine. People and kids dying in Ukraine, people were in absolute uproar and it felt like it was okay. If you were a brown kid or a brown person dying, that’s just what happened. That’s what happened. But if you’re a white person dying in Ukraine, the world was going upside down. So I always found that as I wrote on my shirt, all lives are equal. But I didn’t feel like all lives were treated like equals. What I was pushing for, just like what Senator David Pocock is pushing for, is we need to sanction Israel until they stop doing what they’re doing and they let full humanitarian aid flow into Gaza. I mean we can’t be trading with anyone in any country that has such blatant disregard for humanitarian and international law.

Sabra Lane: Australia already has sanctions against a number of individuals. What are you seeking? Are you saying that we should stop all exports?

Usman Khawaja: Absolutely. The morals and the standards that you set for your allies should be higher than anyone else, should be higher than any country that you’re not quotation marks allied with. How are we going to accept that the killing and starvation, that that is fine by the standards we set as Australians moving forward?

Sabra Lane: Banning imports though might mean that Israeli-made drugs, critical minerals and fertilizers would be stopped from coming here and that could affect people’s health and Australian businesses. Is that fair on them?

Usman Khawaja: I mean at the end of the day there needs to be a balance of what you think is right and what you stand for. I mean there’s thousands of people dying overseas and you can say there’s certain things that Israel might be making that we import and bring it in, but is there a way to get this from other places? I mean the fact that we’re not even discussing this, the rhetoric from the government, and this is not me, this is a rhetoric from the government. They have been condemning what Israel has been doing, how they have been doing it over the last few months. It’s not me, they’ve been saying it. Senator Penny Wong has been going out and saying she does not agree, she’s been using very, very harsh words. But obviously the harsh words are making no impact. Israel don’t care what you say. Someone’s got to make a stand and at some stage the action has to match the rhetoric and it has not done that so far.

Sabra Lane: Usman Khawaja, thanks for talking to AM.

Usman Khawaja: Cheers, thank you.

Sabra Lane: Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja.