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Inaugural lifetime achievement award won by Brisbane campaigner
19 Aug 2026
The Alliance has awarded its inaugural Lifetime Achievement award to Brisbane-based campaigner, Janina Anstee, to recognise her decades of advocating for gambling reform.
Ms Anstee has campaigned tirelessly for gambling reform since 1987 after her husband Leslie took his own life after a 40-year gambling addiction that began at age 13 and left the family in debt.
Within months, Janina turned her grief into a campaign — meeting racing ministers and giving media interviews to demand gambling reform.
In 1988, Women's Day published her list of demands: bans on gambling advertising, health warnings on betting tickets and poker machines, a government body to control the industry, school education programs, implementing credit restrictions for at-risk gamblers, as well as a public awareness campaign.
Alliance Chair, Angela Tillmanns presented the award to Ms Anstee to recognise her amazing contribution.
“Her demands for change all those years ago in 1988 closely mirror many of the 31 unanimous recommendations of Parliament's 2023 "Murphy Report" into online gambling harm — meaning Janina was making the case for reform 35 years before Parliament caught up,” Ms Tillmanns said.
“Now nearly 80, she's still campaigning, having updated her policy brief again as recently as this year. We are so honoured to be able to recognise her great contribution over so many years.
Ms Anstee said it was time for the Prime Minister to “pull his head out of the sand”.
"Something needs to be done, families are still hurting, I don't want all the struggles I and my family have experienced over the past 40 years to be for nothing. The damage (trauma) that is caused from gambling gets passed on through the generations - it never ends", Ms Anstee said.
"Every year they delay, another family gets the phone call I got in 1987. I don't understand what there is left to inquire into. I am still living with the consequences of this now with my children and my grandchildren."
“Thirty-eight years later, they're still debating it. I call it what I always called it — common sense. They should not be profiteering from people's misery and illness — it's a crime."