Mark Kempster, Alliance for Gambling Reform
29 Jan 2026
Thomas Jefferson famously declared: “You get the government you deserve.”
Given the way the Tasmanian government handled the release of the longawaited Deloitte report into poker
machines – releasing it quietly on the eve of the Australia Day long weekend and ignoring its recommendations – it doesn’t reflect well on Tasmanian voters.
But Thomas Jefferson had no idea how powerful some lobby groups could be and how successfully they can thwart the public wishes and break weak-kneed politicians to bow to their wishes.
The gambling lobby in Australia has always been powerful. My colleague at the Alliance, Reverend Tim Costello, compares it to America’s gun lobby and says while guns is their blind spot ours is gambling.
Australians lose more to gambling on a per capita basis than any other nation on the planet – losing a whopping $32bn every year.
And perhaps what is most concerning is the gambling industry appears intent on grooming the next generation for gambling.
Research undertaken on behalf of the Alliance shows a whopping 600,000 underage teenagers (aged 12-17) are gambling more than $18m each year.
And while much of this is online gambling, there is evidence now that more young people are playing the pokies. This is being driven by kids starting to bet online and then betting socially with their friends on poker machines. It’s also being driven by online influencers who boast about their poker machine wins and encourage ever risky betting.
All this to say every parent in Australia should be concerned about the impact of gambling on our kids.
And the vast majority of parents are now aware of it – with polls showing more than 75 per cent of people want all gambling ads banned.
Poker machines are dangerous products and the gambling industry routinely focuses them in poorer communities who can least afford the losses.
The gambling industry is a silent, powerful and insidious influence on our parliaments across Australia.
They routinely donate more to the major political parties, they employ more lobbyists, and they “entertain” more politicians (giving them unfair access to decision-makers) than any other sector.
And they also exert pressure on politicians. There is a litany of cases where the industry has gone to war with politicians. The most prominent was when clubs ran an aggressive campaign against the Gillard government’s poker machine reforms which were inspired by Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie.
After running an aggressive and well-funded campaign that such reforms were “un-Australian”, the Gillard government caved.
And of course Tasmania saw this first-hand in the 2018 election when Labor struggled amid a strong industry-backed advertising campaign and support for the Liberals.
The latest events in Tasmania have shown the power of the gambling industry to get politicians to cower to their will – again.
The Deloitte report was widely viewed as a delaying mechanism – a review that deferred long-needed reform.
And no doubt the industry hoped it would find in its favour with its wishes to stall real reform and instead opt for the failed and dangerous path of implementing facial recognition.
Instead, Deloitte produced a report that outlined a credible, workable policy proposal that would cut problem gambling by around onethird, boost the state economy by $230m, and create about 200 new jobs.
It backed what experts call the “gold standard” in poker machine harm reduction, the implementation of a cashless, mandatory, precommitment card.
Of course, such a proposal is not new in Tasmania, we have seen politicians of all persuasions suggest such a move only to be railroaded by the gambling industry and to buckle.
There are some brave politicians who are standing firm, such as a number of independents, foremost among them is Kristie Johnston and Meg Webb. And of course there is also the former treasurer Michael
Ferguson.
The only way that things will change in Tasmania and across Australia is if voters speak out and tell their MPs that they are sick of the losses and social harm gambling is doing in their communities.
We need to let all MPs know that we don’t want a parliament that bends to the will of powerful lobby groups such as the gambling industry. Only in this way will we get the politicians we truly deserve.