Gambling, our biggest criminal industry, has given politicians tens of millions

Is there another legal Australian industry with a greater criminal record than the gambling industry?

With the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) now launching an audit of Sportsbet and Bet365 — to check their compliance with money laundering laws, the NSW Crime Commission’s recent findings about the use of poker machines for money laundering, and the revelations about extensive crime, money laundering and links to organised crime of Star and Crown Casinos — gambling across casinos, clubs and pubs and online has now surpassed the banking industry for systemic misconduct and criminality.

NSW politics remains paralysed by the influence of ClubsNSW, which is opposed to mandatory debit card use in poker machines, a key recommendation from the Crime Commission report into the way criminals pour billions of crime proceeds into poker machines across the state.

Both sides of politics in NSW take huge donations from gambling interests. According to Australian Electoral Commission donations data, from 1999 to 2021, the Labor, Liberal and National parties took more than $5 million in donations from gambling interests, dominated by ClubsNSW, which paid them more than $3.4 million. NSW Labor also received more than $100,000 from unions engaged in the gambling industry.

Opposition to mandatory cashless poker machines within the NSW government is led by the Nationals, which has received around $600,000 in donations from gambling interests since the turn of the century.

While NSW is by far the biggest state for gambling donations, the federal parties have received even more largesse from the sector: around $6.5 million since 1999 — dominated by the Australian Hotels Association and its state branches. The AHA federal office alone has handed more than $1.8 million to both federal and state/territory parties; its NSW office has handed more than $3 million to the federal and NSW parties.

Between the federal parties and their state and territory branches, gambling interests have contributed more than $22 million to the major parties since 1999, making them the single biggest donor in the past quarter century. And the industry is careful to evenly split the donations: Labor across all its branches received $9.5 million, the Liberals $10.8 million and the Nationals $2 million.

What discrepancy there is between the parties mostly reflects the bombardment of the Tasmanian Liberals with cash by the Australian Hotels Association in 2017-18 to help the Liberals campaign against Tasmanian Labor’s poker machine reforms — in 2017 and 2018 the Tasmanian Liberals received $300,000 in reported donations by gambling interests.

This is why politicians remain unwilling to upset the gambling lobby and especially the clubs and pubs sector, for which poker machine revenue is a river of gold. Tens of millions in donations mean gambling is the biggest state captor of all, with a lock on both sides of politics, even as evidence routinely emerges that gambling is the biggest criminal enterprise in Australia.