Gambling reform is a safe bet

New data released last week show Australians lost about $32 billion on gambling in 2022-23 – including $16 billion on pokies and another $9 billion on betting.

Australians have the highest gambling losses, per person, in the world.

Gambling losses can have devastating consequences, including mental and financial stress, family violence, even suicide.

These effects aren’t limited to a handful of problem gamblers. About 1 million people either suffer, or live with someone suffering, from severe gambling harm. And many more lose more than they can afford.

Given these addictive products’ high risk of harm, Australia’s regulation of gambling is surprisingly lax.

Overseas, high-impact, high-loss pokies are mostly confined to casinos. But in Australia, 93 per cent of our 186,000 pokies are pockmarked through our suburbs and towns, increasing the risk of harm. Pokies in Australia are more common than ATMs, post boxes or public toilets.

Meanwhile, the growth of online betting means gambling is available at our fingertips, anywhere, anytime – as we are constantly reminded by a torrent of advertising.

Australians expect strong consumer protections for potentially harmful products. But for too long, the emphasis has been on ‘responsible gambling’: blaming individuals, rather than the systems and policy settings that foster gambling harm.

Recent federal and state reviews have recommended better ways to prevent gambling harm.

The top priorities should be banning gambling ads and introducing maximum loss limits.

Last year’s Murphy Inquiry – a major federal parliamentary inquiry into online gambling harm chaired by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy – reached multi-partisan consensus on all 31 recommendations, including a full ban on gambling advertising.

Australians are still awaiting the federal government’s response. This is a significant opportunity for the Albanese government to show it is serious about reducing our excessive exposure to gambling.

Reducing exposure is the first step. The second is to make gambling products safer by introducing maximum loss limits for the most harmful products – pokies and online gambling.

Under a loss-limits system, before you start gambling, you’ll need to decide the most you’re willing to lose – and then the system will help you stick to it, even if the dazzling glow of the pokie machine or app screen blinds your better judgment. The system would also have built-in maximum limits to prevent people suffering catastrophic losses.

Basically, it’s a seatbelt for gambling – you won’t feel it when everything’s going smoothly, but it’s there to prevent disaster when things are going off the road.

The federal government should introduce loss limits for online gambling, and state and territory governments should introduce them for pokies.

Many past attempts to protect consumers have been thwarted by the gambling industry and its allies. The organised resistance of pokies clubs was a major reason for the Gillard government’s infamous backflip on pokies reform in 2012.

More than a decade later, the threat that the pokies industry could do it again lingers: a former NSW gambling minister said that when he was considering pokies reforms, he was told “we will do to you what we did to Julia Gillard”.

The industry has everything to play for: three-quarters of gambling spending comes from just 5 per cent of heavy gamblers. Preventing gambling harm means cutting into industry profits. One of the most dog-eared pages in the lobbying playbook is stoking community fear about unintended consequences of reform.

The gambling industry, and its allies in broadcasting and sport, have claimed banning gambling ads would imperil free-to-air TV and sport. But the claims don’t stack up.

If gambling ads were banned, those ad spots wouldn’t fade to black, nor be given away for free. They’re expensive because they’re valuable: an opportunity to market to engaged audiences. Other advertisers would step in, just as they did in the 1970s, when tobacco ads were banned.

Even if other advertisers were only willing to pay, say, 80 per cent of what the gambling companies paid for those ad spots, the hit to TV companies would be less than 1 per cent of their ad revenues.

Similarly, the industry’s claims that limiting pokies losses would threaten clubs and communities are just hot air. Look at Western Australia. It doesn’t allow pokies except in Perth Casino, but Western Australians aren’t missing out on clubs, sport, or social connection. In fact, the average WA community has about the same number of clubs per person as NSW – but none of the pokies losses.

Governments shouldn’t shy away from these easy and important public policy wins because of false claims or scare campaigns. Australia has a real opportunity to prevent gambling harm and tip the odds back in the community’s favour.

Over to you, Prime Minister.