Gambling must be addressed as a public health concern affecting families, communities, economies, and society, rather than as a media policy issue, writes Malcolm Baalman, Senior Policy and Advocacy Adviser at the Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA).
Malcolm Baalman writes:
Gambling in Australia is a major public health issue. Australians are, per capita, the world’s ‘biggest losers’, with losses of personal disposable income sitting around $25 billion per annum. That’s about $1,500 per adult. And that’s a 2018 estimate – it’s likely this figure has now surpassed the $30 billion mark.
This loss is equivalent to an income tax rise of several percentage points, mostly falling inequitably on low-income Australians.
A report on ABC sums up the situation succinctly: “We have a lot of data about gambling in Australia. We know that problem gamblers here are “generally more likely to be young, single, unemployed or not employed, Indigenous, men, living in rental accommodation, in a low-socioeconomic area, and more likely to draw their income from welfare payments than those who had no problems.
“We know that problem gambling – which affects about 17 percent of regular gamblers, though this shoots up as high as 70 per cent among young men – is deeply connected to a number of other social problems in this country; problems over which we regularly wring our hands. Domestic violence. Suicide. Homelessness. Indigenous disadvantage. Substance abuse. Mental illness.
“We know, too, that problem gambling is a behavioural addiction recognised in the DSM-5 (the standard classification of mental disorders). That while many people enjoy “a flutter” and rightly consider their choice to do so a free one, there are people for whom gambling is not a choice at all. We know that for every person so afflicted, there are six other people affected adversely by their behaviour.”
Whose health?
But in the past week, the political debate has come to be framed as not about people’s wellbeing, but about the financial health of our three free-to-air TV stations, which have steadily lost revenue in the past decade to online alternatives.
One of their few sources of revenue growth has been gambling ads, and they now claim that losing the revenue from advertising gambling businesses (estimated at $167 million in 2023) will make or break their survival.
Let’s think this through for a moment. We want free-to-air TV in Australia, and at least three viable businesses in competition is good. They are under financial pressure, and $167 million in revenue would help them.
So, in response, our policy is the equivalent of imposing a tax of around $25 billion on low- and middle-income Australians.
This taxation triggers all the adverse health, wellbeing and social problems mentioned above.
The economic impact on government of these problems includes possibly billions in government social security, health and justice system costs, as well as lost tax revenue from people who lose their jobs and instead end up needing social security.
But let’s say we take $167 million of this haul and give it to the TV stations.
Then the rest of the $25 billion taxed from the punters goes not into the public treasury, but instead to a range of private corporations – many of them multinationals, so the profit simply leaves Australia altogether.
That’s our free-to-air TV station assistance plan?
This is, of course, madness as a national policy solution.
Rethink required
We need the Government to rethink this argument entirely. A policy response to the TV industry viability situation should be worked through, but it should begin from a clear understanding that raising revenue from gambling advertising has no place at all in any solution.
All of this was known, and debated, by the parliamentary inquiry which examined the issue in 2022 and 2023, and produced the excellent You Win Some, You Lose More report.
This multi-partisan report, chaired by the late Peta Murphy MP, put principles of equity and public health first, and gave the Government 31 recommendations for action. The Government, the TV sector, and the gambling industry have had ample time to deal with this.
The impacts of problem gambling are not confined to individuals but include families, communities, economies, and society. Gambling must be addressed as a public health issue.
It is PHAA policy that there should be a legislative ban on all forms of gambling marketing, including sports sponsorship and advertising.
PHAA is also an active member of the Alliance for Gambling Reform, which is coordinating advocacy for political action on this matter.
We are calling for the implementation of all the recommendations of the Murphy Report, immediately, without kicking the can further down the road.
The health and wellbeing of millions of Australians depends on it.
Read the Alliance for Gambling Reform’s open letter to the Prime Minister and Opposition here.
• Malcolm Baalman is Senior Policy and Advocacy Adviser at PHAA. This article was first published by the PHAA’s Intouch blog.
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Great article. But when you talk about the “marketing” of gambling are you being inclusive enough?
While the recent focus has been on legislative restrictions for online gambling, there is another insidious practice which normalises the source of Australia’s most significant gambling-related harm: electronic gaming machines.
In the ACT, a number of licensed clubs, each with hundreds of poker machines, thoughtfully provide children’s indoor play areas (and of course children’s meals). Promoting themselves as “family-friendly”, these venues become the locations for everything from family dinners to children’s birthday parties – thereby firmly cementing the idea of poker machine gambling as a normal activity in the minds of children.
Research by Deakin University in 2017 found that, despite the presumed separation of gaming areas from other areas of clubs, children said that the sounds from the machines were the loudest sound that they could hear when in the restaurant. Children could also mimic the physical gestures involved in poker machine gambling. More than half of the children exposed to this type of gambling said that they wanted to try pokies when they were older.
Parents who are concerned about their children’s vulnerability to the promotion of online gambling should be at least equally concerned about gambling promotion in poker machine venues.
(And do we think that it is appropriate for public events, including those hosted by our elected representatives and electoral candidates, to be held in gaming venues, as many currently are?)