Bring it in tight, Tom Waterhouse. Yes, yes, yes, it is me again, and no, I don't have particularly hard feelings because you're suing me for defamation at the moment. Nothing personal, what?

Nevertheless, because of that legal action, I have of course tried to temper my remarks when it comes to your statement to the joint select committee on gambling reform on Tuesday, where you robustly defended your ubiquitous presence on sports broadcasts across Australia, asserting your right to flog your sports betting operation as you please.

So let me, as delicately as I can muster, as carefully as possible, choose my words delicately . . . with malice towards none . . . with charity to all:

ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FREAKING MIND?!

If you wrote the statement to the select committee, give yourself an uppercut. If someone wrote it for you, pretend you're Mark Bouris on Celebrity Apprentice and say loudly: "You're fired."

In that statement, you say you have, "No intention of targeting children through our advertising . . ."

What are the kids then? Collateral damage? Whether or not the kids are specifically "targeted" by your company is hardly the point? The point is that they ARE hit, regardless. The point is that while the government has the brains to have a ban on gambling advertising on programs children are likely to be watching, there remains the ludicrous exception of sport, which millions of Australian kids watch for hours on end!

The point is that because of this exposure gambling chat in the playground is now endemic, and many young Australians think that gambling is glamorous instead of the brain-dead loser pursuit it actually is. So you didn't specifically target them? So what?

The outcome is equally devastating – a time-bomb that will go off when they have more than their lunch money to lose.

You also said: "In the first two rounds we presented at some times alongside Nine commentators but not as a commentator rather as a broadcast sponsor . . ."

Really? Why then did you have the same Channel Nine microphone as Kenny, Sterlo, Phil Gould et al? Why then did your mother, the redoubtable Gai Waterhouse, defend your capacity as a commentator, saying you had followed sport all your life? And what do you mean "we"? Unless you are one of quintuplets, you, specifically, seem to be everywhere!

And so from the third round you went to "discrete segments"? In response, I am trying to think of the apposite word. Oh, I remember: Bullshit! Can't you see that you really are gambling's answer to "Eddie Everywhere", that you have become "Tommy Totally Too Much", that every time we turn on the tube to watch sport, there you are spruiking us on new ways to do our dough? Even then, you were only getting warmed up.

"This type of arrangement by our company, and others," you said, "in this and other industries is vital in keeping TV a viable and relevant medium to promote business".

There's that word again. Bullshit! To begin with, TV has gone fine for 60 years without gambling advertising to speak of, and secondly, your "industry" has only one ultimate wide-ranging product: impoverished Australians.

Seriously, think about it. What else do you produce in bulk, but impoverished Australians? Go on, write the angry letter, add to the writ, but I challenge you to give an answer to that question: What else do you produce in bulk, but impoverished Australians?

This is the industry you want the government to protect? Why would they? Why do they? (I'll leave you to answer that, Senator Conroy. How bloody hard can it be to shut down the exception, particularly when the vast majority of Australians want exactly that to happen?)

But go on, Tom Waterhouse, please do. "For TV to be able to afford broadcast rights, the funding of which is ploughed back into the sport," you say, "it needs to stay relevant to advertisers. In the modern age traditional advertising (commercial ad breaks) no longer always works effectively."

Too good! Umm, if the broadcasters can't afford the broadcast rights, who will be able to afford them – the non-broadcasters? Perhaps BHP could buy them, and put out the games as smoke signals from Port Kembla? No, on reflection, I think one way or another the broadcast rights will only stay with true broadcasters.

In sum, your submission is a joke, your industry is a painfully poisonous parasite on Australia's arse, and I will, I daresay, see you in court.

Waterhouse's Submission Is A Joke That's Not Funny