OPINION PIECES

Australia has a very big blind spot when it comes to gambling and the immense harm it causes in the community.

Gambling harm is not treated as a public health issue like other ‘harmful, legal’ products such as tobacco or alcohol. There is little or no government funding of research or public education to better understand just how harmful gambling can be.

Of course, it is not a natural blind spot; it is one that has been carefully curated and bankrolled by the billion-dollar gambling industry.

It is an industry that outspends virtually all others when it comes to advertising, with over a million gambling advertisements broadcast on free-to-air television and on radio alone in the 12 months to April 2023.

This week Sydney University announced it has established a centre for excellence in gambling research. This centre is substantially funded by the International Center (sic) for Responsible Gaming, as well as Entain Australia and Sportsbet.

Entain Australia and Sportsbet are subsidiaries of international gambling operators, and run major online bookmaking businesses in Australia, as well as other global operations.

New research undertaken by Federation University in collaboration with the Coroners Court of Victoria, examined the Victorian Suicide Register which revealed at least 184 suicides were directly related to gambling. There were another 17 gambling-attributed suicides by "affected others" such as family members.

The ACT should be among the first jurisdictions in Australia to introduce significant gambling reform in the shape of a mandatory cashless gambling card.

The move would be groundbreaking, representing a major blow to a predatory gambling industry that costs Australians more than $27 billion in losses every year - more per capita than any other country on the planet.

Australia is approaching a tipping point on gambling reform. After decades of inaction, that has allowed Australian’s to be fleeced of $26 billion a year in gambling losses, there is now a chance of real reform. 

And while there are several fronts where the war on gambling is being fought across Australia, Tasmania is at the forefront of the battle.  

Anti-gambling campaigner Tim Costello is full of praise for Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews' recently announced pokies reforms. Now he wants other leaders to follow suit.

Two weeks ago, Victorian Premier Dan Andrews announced sweeping reforms for pokies. For me, after 25 years of campaigning, it was the beginning of the end of a state government protection racket for a predatory industry that has caused so much harm to Victorians. Congratulations, Dan.

I have been waiting for this day; waiting for almost five years for the federal government’s national gambling self-exclusion register, BetStop, to be open for business.

Gambling is normalised and celebrated which has led to the highest levels of gambling losses per capita in the world – 40 per cent higher for poker machines and 20 per cent higher for online gambling – well ahead of any other country.

I have not met a parent who is not horrified by the rampant use of vaping among our young people.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton was right to put gambling, and more particularly sports gambling advertising, in the national spotlight in his budget reply speech to Parliament last week.
With Australians losing $25 billion to gambling every year - more than any other country - it is an issue that has profound financial, societal and health impacts for the country.

For someone who is experiencing gambling harm, either due to their own gambling or someone else’s gambling, finding a quality service is often difficult.

People with lived experience regularly tell us they struggle to find independent and quality information about what is on offer and the likely outcomes of any referral.

Gambling losses in Australia amount to a staggering $25 billion annually - losses that, per capita, are greater than anywhere else in the world and 40 per cent greater than the next biggest losing country.

"At the very least, given the results in this election, we expect the cashless gambling card will continue to be strongly pushed in both the lower and upper houses of the NSW Parliament." said Alliance CEO Carol Bennett in Crikey.

Joe Aston has laid bare the hypocrisy and delusion of the leaders of our rapidly growing gambling sector (“Sportsbet CEO Barni Evans is kidding himself”, Rear Window, March 23). It should surprise nobody that the CEO of a foreign-owned online gambling company is seen to put profits before the welfare of Australians.

As a society and as a health sector we were far too naïve, far too trusting and far too late in realising and then challenging the lies of big tobacco.

Tobacco executives repeatedly lied and buried their own research that showed how addictive and harmful their products are – all for the sake of making profits.

Thankfully today government regulations strictly limits tobacco availability and promotion to reduce the harm it causes our health, our lives and the wider economy. Of course the industry is still seeking to exploit any avenues it can in the quest for profit and vaping has become the new frontier with a new generation of young people the new target.

In 1994, the executives of seven of the world’s largest tobacco companies appeared before the US Congress and infamously declared that nicotine was not addictive. History subsequently shows they were lying, their own research revealed how addictive tobacco was but they buried the findings.

Today government regulations strictly limits tobacco availability and promotion to reduce the harm it causes our health, our lives and the wider economy. Ironically, this is far from the case when it comes to another profound ‘public harm’, gambling.

I have had the tragic duty of presiding over the funerals of six people who have committed suicide due to their gambling. Their losses, their shame, their losing battle to stop gambling – all became too much. The pain suffered by family and friends is indescribable. The loss of life is so senseless and horrific. It is why I have been such a prominent campaigner for gambling reform for more than three decades.

Just as Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, led to a shift in how people viewed the pesticide DDT, so too is a fundamental shift needed in how people view gambling and the powerful industry involved, according to public health experts in England.

“As we struggle with a cost-of-living crisis, we must ask why we seem unable to act against a powerful industry that, in effect, acts as a mechanism for transferring money from the poor and vulnerable to the wealthy and privileged,” they write in the BMJ. “When will the gambling industry have its Silent Spring moment?”

In more than 30 years of campaigning for gambling reform, I have not witnessed the anger that now exists at the excesses of the gambling industry.

Everyone I speak to is fed up with being bombarded by gambling ads on our screens. Australia is a virtually unregulated, Wild West for foreign-owned online sports gambling agencies that are registered in the Northern Territory and pay minimal tax.

Most people were not offended by the tagline, gamble responsibly - that followed the multitude of gambling advertisements that we are bombarded with every day.

But if people understood the deliberate irresponsibility of the industry, the evidence that through its casinos and poker machines in pubs and clubs it has facilitated organised crime, fraud and money laundering involving billions of dollars - they would think differently.

Almost 20 years ago the Victorian government finally moved to impose closing hours on the state’s poker machine venues.

The laws were far from draconian. Venues were required to close for just four hours a day – which meant gambling could still happen in the wee small hours of the day when those who suffer the most gambling harm are likely to lose the most.