Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Put simply, there are millions of urgent reasons to support the Interactive Gambling Amendment (National Self-exclusion Register) Bill 2019. It's critically important that we pass it—and pass it as soon as possible. As many as 160,000 Australian adults suffer right now, today, with severe problems in their lives as a result of gambling. Up to a further 350,000 Australian adults currently display gambling behaviours, which may make them vulnerable to problem gambling in the future. According to the Productivity Commission, as many as 30 per cent of regular gamblers in this country are problem gamblers, and as much as 40 per cent of all of the money lost in gambling in Australia is lost by this relatively small group.

Recent research commissioned by the Morrison government shows that the problem may be even more serious among those who are participants in interactive wagering online. This research, conducted by the Australian Institute of Family Studies, surveyed 5,076 adults who have taken part in online gambling in the last year. No less than 52 per cent of respondents were classified as being at risk or already experiencing gambling related harm. The impact on their lives and on the lives of others, most particularly their families, can be very significant. On average, every one of these high-risk gamblers impacts six others' lives. They impact their spouses, children, family, friends and employers with their problem gambling. Each moderate-risk gambler affects three others, and even low-risk gamblers affect an average of one other person. The results can be deadly.

As Dr Charles Livingstone of Monash University, whom I've worked with a fair bit in this space in recent years, says: 'Gambling is a public health problem. In terms of disability-adjusted life-years, the impact of gambling is approximately the same as excessive alcohol consumption.' The evidence for this impact on gamblers themselves is overwhelming. It includes, among other studies, Black, Shaw, McCormick, and Allen's 'Marital status, childhood maltreatment, and family dysfunction: a controlled study of pathological gambling'. It also includes Hayatbakhsh et al's 'Young adults' gambling and its association with mental health and substance use problems' in Australia and New Zealand, from the Journal of Public Health, and Kerber et al's 'The impact of disordered gambling among older adults', in the Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services.

These studies found that problem gambling is strongly linked to increased financial problems and bankruptcy and increased likelihood of divorce, substance abuse, anxiety and depression, and even suicide. For the significant others of problem gamblers the impacts can be just as significant. A 2013 Swedish study by Svensson, Romild and Shepherdson in BMC Public Health revealed that those who were closely associated with a problem gambler were significantly more likely to experience poor mental health, risky alcohol consumption, economic hardship and relationship problems. These terrible impacts are no surprise when you know the sheer scale of losses that regular gamblers in this country are experiencing.

According to the Australian gambling statistics, collated by the Queensland government, in 2017 alone Australians lost almost $24 billion to gambling. That equates to around about seven hospitals the size of the University of the Sunshine Coast. These are sums that even financially secure families can ill afford to be losing on a regular basis. For those on lower incomes such losses entrench economic disadvantage and divert money in our economy away from productive uses. There is strong evidence to suggest that gambling impacts even on those who are not close to a problem gambler—for example, through an increase in crime.

Studies—including 'The Influence of Gaming Expenditure on Crime Rates in South Australia' by Wheeler et al.—suggest that an alarmingly high percentage of problem gamblers have committed a gambling-related offence like theft, fraud or robbery. You can see this illustrated clearly in the different crime rates in areas of the country with poker machines and those without. Postcodes in Victoria with no electronic gaming machines are associated with 30 per cent fewer incidents of domestic violence and significantly lower rates of income-generating crime. In South Australia a 2008 study found the same connection. In short, the greater the amount of money spent on gaming in a particular area the higher the area's income-generating crime becomes.

In conclusion, in this country we have more than 500,000 high-risk and moderate-risk gamblers. We have more than a million Australians gambling regularly. Many millions of lives are blighted by their association with it. We have $24 billion lost. We have increased levels of crime, divorce, bankruptcy, substance abuse, anxiety, depression and suicide. There are millions of reasons to support this bill.

Like people living with other addictions, many, perhaps most, problem gamblers go through times when they want to stop gambling. However, interactive wagering presents a number of unique challenges for anyone who wants to change their lives. Online gambling is constantly available, accessible at any moment from the smartphone in your pocket. If you have an account that phone will be bombarded with constant emails and messages promoting yet more and more wagers. Users can have multiple accounts and, indeed, on average, they have 2.3 of them. Though a user might shut down an account, often there will be others waiting to be activated and used when their resolve falters. Finally, online gambling can be hidden from those around you. Available silently and easily through a smartphone it is easy to conceal from people who are trying to help. These factors make online wagering a nightmare for any problem gambler who wants to make a difference for themselves and for those around them.

This bill will make these challenges significantly easier to overcome. By allowing users to opt-out of interactive wagering services for the periods of between three months and one's own lifetime, the bill furnishes users with the opportunity to give themselves a break. During that break their smartphone will no longer be an enemy in their struggle against problem gambling. Wagering will no longer be available to them at the touch of a button—right there in their pocket all hours of the day and the night. That break can be all a problem gambler needs to regain control and adopt a healthier approach to their wagering. For others, it will give them time to reflect on their habits or perhaps turn a corner and stop their gambling completely. By excluding the user from all of their accounts simultaneously and preventing them from signing up for any more, the register will ensure that their addiction cannot leave problem gamblers with an easy out. It will deny them that secret way back into their old habits, which can so often be the downfall of good intentions. By prohibiting interactive wagering providers from actively marketing to users during the time they are registered, the bill will end the constant barrage of promotion which makes temptation so much harder to resist.

Finally, the bill will allow users to nominate up to five individuals to be a support person and ensure that these individuals are informed about when the exclusion is beginning and when it is due to end. This will help problem gamblers to bring their struggle into the light and to draw on the support of their friends and family. By informing supporters when an exclusion is due to end, the register will encourage conversations about how well it has worked and whether the user should consider extending it.

If we are to reduce and hopefully even end the scourge of problem gambling in this country, we must support gamblers to transform their own lives. We must provide them with the means to limit their exposure and the tools they need to turn things around. That is what this bill delivers. It's an important step forward, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to support it today. However, as I've said in this place, in the media and in my conversations with the Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts, I believe that alongside the legislation before us today there is more that we could also consider doing. In particular, I believe we should consider extending the government's restrictions on gambling advertising around live sport. It is very welcome that the government has acted to prohibit gambling advertising from traditional and online broadcasts of live sport between the hours of 5 am and 8.30 pm from five minutes before kick-off. However, any major sporting event broadcast on television or online often includes extensive pre-match coverage and entertainment which appeals to children.

I could not tell you the amount of feedback I got on social media from people watching the grand final—whether it was the NRL or the AFL—about the amount of absolute bombardment that people were getting on television for live sport betting. I believe we should consider extending the prohibition against gambling advertising to all such pre-match coverage. Equally, many of the biggest sporting contests are scheduled in prime-time evening slots to maximise their broadcast appeal. With sports matches lasting two to three hours, most of these major contests continue well past 8.30 pm. Many, if not most, children are allowed to watch these contests to the end. I therefore also believe that we should extend the ban to all coverage of live sporting contests whether it continues past 8.30 or not. Ultimately, in the longer-term, I hope that we will be able to act to prohibit gambling ads from broadcasting services altogether between 7 am and 10 pm.

We have a duty in this place to protect our most vulnerable Australians from the harm that is caused by gambling. The number of children who now seem to be able to disassociate sport from gambling is very, very concerning. When I was a kid, when you'd be swapping footy cards, you knew all the favourite players of your favourite teams, their positions and how many goals they kicked over the weekend. Today, what our young people know about sport is more and more about the odds that someone is offering them. It is a huge problem that we in this place have an obligation to address. Let kids be kids and sport be sport.

If people want to gamble when they're adults, that's a matter for them. But this bill will go a long way towards addressing problem gambling. We need to do everything we can to limit problem gamblers' exposure to wagering and help them avoid its most damaging effects. This bill is an important step forward in achieving that end for the hundreds of thousands of Australians who are already at risk of problem gambling, and I commend it to the House.

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