Gambling is rampant in Australia, yet Labor, Liberals fail to address it

Australians are some of the world's biggest gamblers. Yet efforts to address this financial drain on the public are few and far between.

At the back end of a six-week federal election campaign in which the mainstream media has put in a decidedly mixed performance, it is very easy to reel off a long list of policy areas that were not adequately debated.

The AFR had a big editorial whinge on Monday about the lack of debate on fiscal discipline and a return to surplus. And when Dr Norman Swan convened a special election panel on Radio National’s Health Report last week, the consensus was that COVID policy and management had been ignored by both major parties. Similarly, Cathy McGowan was lamenting the lack of any republic debate during her appearance on Q+A last night.

If the big parties have nothing to say on a policy area, it is very difficult even for a determined media to elevate it. Look no further than the gambling sector, which has attracted scant attention at the editorial level, while the community has put up with the usual deluge of gambling advertising, and political pundits have regularly quoted the election odds being offered by the online bookmakers.

The last time gambling featured prominently in federal politics was in 2010 when Andrew Wilkie and Nick Xenophon wrote mandatory pre-commitment for poker machine gamblers into their agreements to support the minority Gillard government. After an 18-month war with the industry, the proposal was dumped.

Xenophon is attempting a South Australian Senate comeback in this election and appears to be one of the only candidates to have put out any policy on gambling reform, with this call for restrictions on gambling advertising.

Tim Costello was a veteran of the 2010 gambling battles, and told Crikey yesterday that he has reached out to the teal independents and received a very warm reception on the question of whether they would push for advertising restrictions. So, if we do finish with a hung parliament, gambling reform could well be on the agenda as both Wilkie and the Greens would also be expected to push for it.

For the record, the biggest online bookmaker, Sportsbet, was last night paying $2.20 on a hung Parliament and $1.65 for a majority government.

As for the challenging independents likely to get up, these are the 12 most prospective Sportsbet rankings going into election day:

Zoe Daniel in Goldstein (VIC): $1.35
Allegra Spender in Wentworth (NSW): $1.87
Dr Sophie Scamps in Mackellar (NSW): $2
Georgia Steele in Hughes (NSW): $2
Dr Monique Ryan in Kooyong (VIC): $2.15
Kate Chaney in Curtin (WA): $2.40
Kylea Tink in North Sydney (NSW): $2.75
Dai Le in Fowler (NSW): $2.95
Rob Priestly in Nicholls (VIC): $3
Jack Dempsey in Hinkler (QLD): $4
Hanabeth Luke in Page (NSW): $4.50
Caz Heise in Cowper (NSW): $6

When it comes to the Greens, Sportsbet is paying just $1.01 on Adam Bandt retaining Melbourne but has written off the Greens in all other Victorian seats, with their only two prospects seemingly being north of the Tweed with Max Chandler-Mather paying $3.75 in Kevin Rudd’s old seat of Griffith and Elizabeth Watson-Brown paying $4 in LNP-held Ryan.

Australians are expected to lose tens of millions gambling on the election, but this is a drop in the bucket compared with the $25 billion a year that the industry takes from gamblers.

The latest profit result from Dublin-based Flutter Entertainment, parent of Sportsbet, showed that it enjoyed an 8% jump in gambling revenue to $517 million in the March quarter. That’s $5.74 million a day that Australians lost to Sportsbet so far in 2022.

Yesterday we even had the spectacle of our most valuable gambling company, Aristocrat Leisure, floating the prospect of government legislation freeing up online casinos to operate in Australia.

Aristocrat supplies about half of Australia’s nearly 200,000 poker machines in 5000 venues across the country, so the $21 billion company profits nicely from the political power of the land-based gambling sector, which has historically been able to restrict online gambling to wagering and sports betting.

As for whether an Albanese government will be brave enough to pursue gambling reform, sadly, history shows that it has been Labor rather than Coalition governments that made most of the decisions that turned Australians into the world’s biggest gamblers. Indeed, the Labor Party itself owns seven pokies venues in Canberra and Sydney through the Canberra Labor Club and the Randwick Labor Club. These are estimated to drain about $50 million a year from gamblers and popped up in this recent ABC investigation into gambling donations.

As for how the gambling industry would look if we ever got federal and state governments to take a public health approach to regulating the sector, look no further than the tobacco sector.

However, more needs to be done that just plain packaging, punitive taxes and a complete advertising ban. In the case of the pokies alone, the reform job won’t be complete until we get a multibillion dollar pokies buyback fund, 5000 venues cut to 500, a compensation funds for all the victims of this state sponsored abuse, and formal apologies from premiers and chief ministers alike.

Some stronger consumer laws protecting against dangerous products wouldn’t go astray either, along with a law that says no registered political party is allowed to own government-issued gambling licences.

Funnily enough, the Canberra Labor Club is in bit of strife at the moment after committing more than $30 million of their ill-gotten pokies profits to building a Mercure Hotel in Belconnen, which was opened by Albanese shortly before COVID hit.

The latest Canberra Labor Club annual report notes that the support of lender ANZ has been pivotal for the past couple of years. Given that banking regulation will be a key issue for federal Labor, it is not ideal that ANZ has leverage over the party through its generosity in providing a $30 million-plus loan to finance the party’s sprawling Canberra pokies empire.