Marie McInerney writes:
Gambling treatment and support services should be the responsibility of health ministers, not industry ministers, according to a new report from the Grattan Institute calling for a public health response to a national gambling crisis that sees more pokies than ATMs in many Australian suburbs.
The report, A better bet: How Australia should prevent gambling harm, also calls on federal and state health ministers – through the national Health Ministers’ Meeting Forum – to commission a review of gambling support services, to help build a stronger evidence base on the most effective supports for people suffering gambling harm.
It also urges mandatory pre-commitment systems for online gambling and pokies, to cap possible losses, and for a blanket ban on gambling advertising.
The report, published today, adds to growing pressures on Federal Cabinet from health and community groups, as well as key backbenchers and former Liberal Prime Ministers, to not walk away from the total advertising ban recommended by an inquiry led by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy.
That possibility emerged last month when Disability Services Minister Bill Shorten revealed Ministers were worried about the impact that a gambling ads ban would have on the viability of free-to-air TV.
Cabinet is reported to be poised to consider watered down reforms proposed by Communications Minister Michelle Rowland, who has responsibility for online betting regulation and advertising, including a partial advertising ban that restricts TV ads to two an hour and bans them during children’s programs or during and in the hour before or after a live sport event.
Targeted to disadvantage
The 64-page Grattan Institute report, authored by CEO Aruna Sathanapally, with researchers Kate Griffiths and Elizabeth Baldwin, says the best way to prevent gambling harm is to make gambling products safer and less ubiquitous.
It said governments should adopt a public health approach that aims to prevent gambling harm across the population, rather than consigning responsibility to individuals, recognising that “harmful gambling arises from a complex interplay of individual and environmental factors”.
Australian governments have started to acknowledge the value of this approach, for example in the 2018 National Consumer Protection Framework for Online Wagering, Murphy’s inquiry, and shifting regulatory approaches in some states, it says.
“But much more needs to be done,” the report said, noting that in France, gambling is now recognised as a harmful product, not a regular consumer product, because it carries significant risks of abuse and public health risks such as addiction and social isolation.
The report graphically outlines risk and prevalence, noting that pokies are more common in Australian suburbs than post boxes, ATMs, or public toilets, and concentrated in the most disadvantaged communities.
In other countries, it says, high-impact, high-loss ‘Australian-style’ pokie machines are typically confined to casinos, but in Australia “they are pockmarked across our suburbs and towns, increasing the risk of harm”.
“People living in the poorest fifth of communities in NSW lose an average of $1,524 a year on pokies, compared with $922 for people living in the most well-off fifth,” it says.
“Residents of Fairfield, one of the poorest communities in Sydney, lose $3,967 a year on pokies – three times the state average. In Victoria, the communities of Brimbank and Dandenong – both disadvantaged – have led the state in pokies losses per person for at least a decade.”
It finds that prevalence and proximity are crucial: people who live within 250 metres of a venue with pokies are about 30 per cent more likely to suffer financial hardship and poor mental health than those living more than two kilometres away.
Pokies are particularly prevalent in NSW, which has almost as many as the rest of Australia combined. In NSW, $1,288 per adult was lost in 2023, double the average of the other states.
Online betting has also surged, particularly among young men, “spurred by a barrage of gambling advertising,” the report said.
Vested interests
Australia has the highest per-capita gambling losses in the world, with average annual losses per adult ($1,635) far exceeding the average in similar countries such as the US ($809) and New Zealand ($584),
Collectively, Australians lost $24 billion gambling in 2020-21 and at least 500,000 Australians have asked their bank to put a gambling transaction block on their account, the report says.
But the costs are not only financial, for people who gamble, their families and the broader community.
In some cases, the consequences can be catastrophic, including job loss, bankruptcy, fraud, relationship breakdown, family violence and suicide”, the authors write in a summary of their report at The Conversation.
Despite the toll, Australian governments have failed to take necessary steps “mainly because of the political risks of taking on the industry and its allies”, the report says.
The main argument from the Federal Government against a full gambling advertising ban is the financial toll that media companies claim it will have on free-to-air TV.
But the political risks for governments also have been more direct, the report says; for example, political donations from gambling businesses were instrumental in Tasmania’s 2018 election, where the future of pokies in pubs and clubs was a key issue.
When the Tasmanian Labor Party proposed removing pokies from pubs and clubs, the gambling industry swung behind the other side, it said. The Liberal Party won the election, with nearly 90 per cent of its declared donations coming from gambling interests (a 10-fold increase on the previous election).
Gambling donations also show a pattern of spiking “when the ‘political heat’ rises, on pokies reform in particular”, the report said. The biggest spike was in 2018-19 when the pokies industry made big donations in the lead up to the 2018 Victorian election, mostly backing Labor in a reported bid to prevent The Greens, who were pushing for gambling reform, from winning the balance of power.
As a result of pressures from gambling, media, sporting and other related interests, governments have let the gambling industry “run wild”, the report says, warning that the industry will push back again on reforms “by denying the problems and stoking community fears”.
But it said, “their trumped-up claims don’t withstand scrutiny”. Sport and free-to-air TV will survive without gambling advertising, clubs in Western Australia still thrive with less pokies revenue, and very few gambling jobs are at risk.
“Federal and state governments should brave the vested interests and work together in the interests of all Australians to make gambling a safer, better bet.”
Ban all advertising and inducements
Pushing for a full ban on gambling advertising, the report highlights the stakes for media companies, with more than one million gambling ads aired on free-to-air TV and metropolitan radio in 2022-23.
It says a partial advertising ban will, by definition, leave gaps that advertisers will capitalise on, as they have in the past.
Gambling advertising on TV increased after restrictions on gambling ads during live sport were introduced in 2018. Likewise, a ban on tobacco advertising on radio and TV in the 1970s pushed advertising into print media, billboards, and sponsorships instead.
Calling also for a national mandatory precommitment system for online gambling, and state-wide mandatory pre-commitment schemes for pokies, the report says no state or territory has yet implemented this measure, which it describes as “the best, simplest approach to preventing gambling harm”.
National review of services
As well as highlighting inadequate prevention measures, the report points to deficiencies in the systems and services meant to help people suffering acute gambling harm. Barriers to support range from shame and stigma to ‘responsible gambling’ measures that imply failure of self-control.
“Blaming problems on a small group of ‘aberrant’ individuals absolves the industry of responsibility, and diminishes the case for stronger action by governments,” it said.
“Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, and people living in rural and remote communities face particularly big barriers to getting support,” it said.
Another barrier is that health and social services professionals often fail to recognise or refer people with gambling problems, it said.
The researchers say there is no established best-practice model of care in Australia; each service designs its own treatment protocol, with limited clinical evidence to draw on.
They call on the national Health Ministers’ Meeting Forum to commission a review of gambling support services to:
- Identify the most effective, and cost-effective, models of care
- Map the availability of current services and identify gaps
- Develop strategies for screening and referral
- Outline priorities for research and evaluation.
Via X/Twitter
See Croakey’s archive of articles on gambling harms
