Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Credit and Other Measures) Bill 2023. This bill seeks to prohibit online gambling service providers from accepting payments by credit card, credit related products and digital currency. The Greens welcome this bill. We believe it is an important step towards reducing the awful harm caused by gambling. In the recent decade, we have seen the online gambling industry expand significantly. According to the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Australia lost more money to online gambling per capita—20 per cent—than any other country in the world. Many of these losses came from people experiencing problem gambling.

Gambling causes enormous harm. It can lead to severe financial distress, loss of employment, relationship breakdowns and mental illness. Devastatingly, a recent investigation by the Guardian Australia found that there are an increasing number of young people entering adulthood with depression and anxiety alongside debt because of gambling in their youth. As the prevalence of online gambling continues to rise, it is imperative to establish safeguards that protect children, adults and our communities from further harm. This is why this bill is important.

The bill builds on the recommendations of the 2021 Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services inquiry into the issue. This inquiry showed that the combination of online gambling and credit is extremely dangerous and can compound problem-gambling behaviours. While the Greens support these reforms, we are disappointed that the government didn't follow the recommendations from Financial Counselling Australia and the Alliance for Gambling Reform to include lottery products in the credit ban.

The lottery sector has rapidly evolved into a large, fast-paced online industry, with many services now being owned by megacorporations such as the Lottery Corporation, the Lottery Office and Lottoland. These are corporations that have historically put profit over the wellbeing of customers and communities. The lottery and keno products of today allow people to easily spend tens of thousands of dollars within minutes, causing significant financial losses and other harmful impacts.

In their submission to the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee inquiry into the bill, Financial Counselling Australia shared many stories of the harrowing impacts of lotteries, both online and in person. For example, this is Jim's story:

Jim is retired. When he sought financial counselling help, he had moved out of the family house due to gambling related harm. The family had imploded. His wife and children insisted he get help.

Jim's only form of gambling was lottery draws and instant win tickets, i.e. 'scratchies', bought solely from his local newsagency, which ran a lottery franchise.

He only ever paid with credit cards.

He ran up such large credit card debts, that he had re-financed the family home with a very costly reverse mortgage, eroding the couple's life time of hard-earned equity.

A recent episode saw him using his son, Matt's, credit card for lottery purchases. Matt lives overseas and 15 years earlier had taken out a credit card with a $5,000 limit as a "just-in-case" measure. Matt had never used the card. Jim obtained limit increases online resulting in the debt escalating to $30,000. Again, the whole amount was gambled on lottery tickets at their local newsagency.

The children felt betrayed by their father's actions, and relationships were damaged.

…   …   …

After 6 months of couples counselling, John has retired to the family home. His therapeutic counselling is ongoing.

I also want to share Mary's story:

Mary, a single mother juggled caring for her child and working night shift in a hospital. She became addicted to lottery draws including instant lotteries—

'scratchies' again. It continues:

She struggled with this addiction seeking help repeatedly over the years. She paid for her lottery spend exclusively on credit cards and over time had four credit cards maxed out. She presented in financial hardship with over $50,000 in lottery acquired credit card debt. She struggled to afford to pay for her child's school excursions and other activities, and this impacted the child who missed out on these activities and often had to stay behind while the other kids enjoyed the full curriculum activities.

After review of all her available options with a financial counsellor, Mary accepted the decision to become bankrupt. This resulted in her being debt free for the first time in many years. Consequently, her stress levels reduced, allowing her the headspace to full engage in therapeutic counselling for the first time.

Allowing lotteries to be exempt from the ban on accepting credit is a huge omission and error, particularly given that many of these products are also exempt from BetStop and the National Self-Exclusion Register. Gambling harm doesn't discriminate, and neither should regulation. Wherever people gamble—be it at the casino, on lotteries or with a bookie—they deserve the same protections in law. For the wellbeing of individuals, their families and communities, the Greens urge the government to reconsider this exemption and include lotteries in the bill.

We know the damage caused by gambling does not stop at credit payments online, and for too long the Labor and Liberal parties have talked about harm reduction but done very little. The Greens are the only political party with a clear, comprehensive platform to take action on gambling. We want to see a national gambling regulator to ensure a consistent approach rather than just a patchwork of regulation that gambling companies and casinos can exploit. We want to see a universal and mandatory precommitment system to protect those at risk from gambling harm. And we want transparency about the impacts of gambling, starting with clear reporting on which local government areas are hardest hit by gambling companies.

But our plans for gambling reform don't stop there. Good governance of this destructive industry by federal, state and territory governments has long been obstructed by political donations. Investigations by the ABC in 2021 revealed that organisations and individuals linked to the gambling industry poured at least $80 million in political donations into the states and territories over recent years, compared with $50 million disclosed at Commonwealth level up to 2020. It is clear that the gambling industry is buying influence and favour, and the major political parties are only too happy to comply. It is time we stopped political donations from the gambling industry at all levels of government. For too long they've bought policy outcomes that reap them profits and increase misery for so many.

We've been pushing for an end to dirty donations from gambling companies, amongst other destructive industries like alcohol and pharmaceutical companies, for a decade, but the big parties refuse to bite the hands that feed them. Weak political donation laws mean that not only is it completely legal for the government to accept donations from industries that stand to benefit from watered-down regulations, but a lot of the time we don't even know where more than one-third of those donations are coming from. We need to clean up politics. The Greens want to ban dirty donations, cap all political donations at $1,000 and improve transparency regarding donations.

As I said, the Greens welcome the introduction of this bill and the ban on online gambling companies using credit. We believe this is an important step towards ending gambling harm in Australia, but we also know that these measures are just fiddling around the edges of a rotten system. We need a strong, coordinated approach to ensure that gambling companies can no longer inflict pain on our communities. That's why the Greens will continue to push for a national independent gambling regulator, a total ban on all gambling ads, an end to dirty donations and to close any loopholes or exemptions where gambling companies can dodge responsibility.

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