OPINION PIECES

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.

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.

Activists from the Grassroots Action Network of Tasmania protest against poker machines outside Parliament House in November 2021.

The departure of Star Entertainment Group’s acting chief, Geoff Hogg, could not have come at a worse time for the group, which on Tuesday is due to plead its case to the NSW casino regulator after it was found unfit to hold its licence.

As we approach the AFL Grand Final and the completion of another season we often ask - how is the health of the game?

The Hawthorn racism scandal has exploded into the media at the very time the league celebrates its season's zenith. It is too early to tell what these revelations will mean for other teams and the wider league.

It should be alarming to people that when they next go into their local pub or club they could have their faces scanned and their data stored.

There is a growing industry push across the nation to use new facial recognition technology.