{"id":102543,"date":"2025-05-15T04:05:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T04:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/102543\/"},"modified":"2025-05-15T04:05:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T04:05:09","slug":"labor-can-fix-australias-gambling-crisis-if-it-has-the-guts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/102543\/","title":{"rendered":"Labor can fix Australia’s gambling crisis \u2014 if it has the\u00a0guts"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have a\u00a0refreshed and revitalised Australian government<\/a>, enriched with great political capital.<\/p>\n

During the last term of parliament before the election, opportunities to address Australia\u2019s raging gambling habit\u00a0were neglected<\/a>. Could this government now have enough authority and courage to take on the gambling ecosystem?<\/p>\n

A massive issue<\/p>\n

Australians are the\u00a0world\u2019s biggest gambling losers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Many attribute this to some\u00a0inherent Australian trait<\/a>. But what it really comes down to is the proliferation of gambling operators and their products. They\u2019re everywhere, along with their marketing and promotion.<\/p>\n

Half of the gambling problems<\/a> in Australia are associated with poker machines, ubiquitous in all states and territories other than Western Australia. Consequently, and unsurprisingly,\u00a0WA has the lowest rate of gambling harms<\/a>. The state has\u00a02,500 pokies at a single Perth casino<\/a> and none in clubs or pubs.<\/p>\n

New South Wales boasts nearly\u00a090,000 pokies<\/a>, the highest pokie \u201cdensity\u201d in Australia, and its clubs and pubs make $8.1 billion a year. Overall, pokie losses in Australia total\u00a0$15.8 billion<\/a>\u00a0per year. Wagering (betting on sport, racing and even elections) is now mainly online and reaps another $8.4 billion in Australia. <\/p>\n

This is the fastest-growing gambling sector, with growth, adjusted for inflation, of\u00a0more than 45%<\/a>\u00a0between 2018-19 and 2022-23. Pokies grew by a more modest 7.6% during the same period. Only casinos went backwards. <\/p>\n

\n\t\tRelated Article Block Placeholder<\/p>\n

\t\t\tArticle ID: 1204145\n\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\"Illegal\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Overall, gambling costs Australians\u00a0more than $32 billion<\/a>\u00a0annually. This has been fuelled by relentless promotion and marketing and the expansion of the\u00a0gambling ecosystem<\/a>: the network of commercial actors who reap a major dividend from gambling losses.<\/p>\n

It includes the bookies, pub and club chains as well as sporting leagues, financial services providers, software and game developers,\u00a0charitable<\/a>\u00a0organisations<\/a>, broadcasters and state and territory governments.<\/p>\n

Of course, gambling comes at a cost: it is\u00a0strongly linked<\/a>\u00a0to broken relationships, loss of assets, employment and educational opportunities, and\u00a0crime rates<\/a>. Intimate partner violence<\/a>\u00a0and neglect of children, along with poor mental and physical health, are also connected to gambling accessibility. As, unfortunately,\u00a0is suicide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, there are ways to reduce gambling harm.<\/p>\n

Six ways to tackle the problem<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong>\u00a0First up, we need a national gambling regulator. This was an important recommendation in the\u00a02023 report<\/a>\u00a0of the all-party parliamentary committee chaired by the late Peta Murphy.<\/p>\n

Currently, gambling is regulated by each state and territory. Some have reasonably robust systems in place. Others, somewhat less so. None are best practice.<\/p>\n

A national system is long overdue, as many gambling businesses operate across multiple Australian jurisdictions. In the absence of national regulation, the Northern Territory has become the de facto national regulator\u00a0for online wagering<\/a>. It offers a low-tax\u00a0and arguably low-intervention regulatory system<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet the vast majority of losses from punters come in other jurisdictions. National regulation would also assist in standardising tax rates and maintaining reasonable uniform standards of regulation and enforcement.<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong>\u00a0Poker machines are Australia\u2019s\u00a0biggest gambling problem<\/a>, but a national precommitment scheme would provide a tool for people to manage their gambling. This proposal has been frequently mooted in Australia since the\u00a0Productivity Commission<\/a>\u00a0recommended it in 2010.<\/p>\n

It has worked well in Europe: forms of it now operate in\u00a027 European countries<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\tRelated Article Block Placeholder<\/p>\n

\t\t\tArticle ID: 1197688\n\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\"Gambling\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Both Victoria and Tasmania have proposed it, as did the Perrottet government in the lead-up to the last NSW election. Unfortunately, the power of\u00a0the pokie lobby<\/a>, supercharged by the\u00a0addiction surplus<\/a>\u00a0it reaps from punters, has\u00a0slowed or stopped<\/a>\u00a0its implementation.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s eminently feasible and is highly likely to significantly reduce the harm of pokies. The technical challenges are far from insurmountable, despite what industry interests argue.<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong>\u00a0Limiting accessibility<\/a>\u00a0to pokies is an important way to reduce harm. Nothing good happens<\/a>\u00a0in a pokie room after midnight, yet they are often open until 4am, with reopening time only a little later. Closing down venues after midnight and not opening until 10am would help a lot of people.<\/p>\n

4.<\/strong>\u00a0We can\u2019t talk about political access without considering some key tools of the gambling ecosystem. Pokie operators have\u00a0an enormous ability<\/a>\u00a0to influence politicians. Donations are a typical method to ensure access, backed up by\u00a0the \u201crevolving door\u201d<\/a>\u00a0of post-politics jobs.<\/p>\n

Politicians also enjoy a\u00a0stream of freebies<\/a>\u00a0from the gambling ecosystem, which allow these businesses to\u00a0bend the ear of a guest<\/a>\u00a0for hours at a time, at lunch, over drinks, or during an event.<\/p>\n

To address this, we need better rules around acceptance of hospitality and gifts. Some states have moved towards such arrangements, but there has been little action on the national front.<\/p>\n

5.<\/strong>\u00a0Another major recommendation from the Murphy committee was\u00a0the banning of online gambling ads<\/a>. The majority of Australians<\/a>\u00a0want it to happen, and gambling ads are banned for almost all other forms of gambling.<\/p>\n

The special treatment for this rapidly growing, highly harmful gambling product makes no sense.<\/p>\n

6.<\/strong>\u00a0Finally, we need to properly resource research into gambling harm and its prevention. Much gambling research (and its conferences) is funded by\u00a0the gambling ecosystem<\/a>, either directly or via representative organisations.<\/p>\n

This raises massive conflicts and has led to a\u00a0poor evidence base<\/a>\u00a0for policy making.<\/p>\n

The time is now<\/p>\n

Anything that stops people from getting into trouble with gambling will be opposed by the gambling ecosystem because their best customers are those with the biggest losses.<\/p>\n

But nobody is saying we should do away with gambling. The evidence-based ideas above would help people with existing problems, and stop many more from ending up in trouble.<\/p>\n

Gambling is a problem we can solve. It does need political effort \u2014 but the Albanese government has the political capital to solve this problem.<\/p>\n

This was originally published in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We have a\u00a0refreshed and revitalised Australian government, enriched with great political capital. During the last term of parliament…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[6732,105,218,285,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-102543","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-gambling","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-mental-health","11":"tag-politics","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114509874704756843","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}