Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

My father is no longer with us. He died in 2010. He was an alcoholic and he had a gambling problem. His gambling addiction affected the lives of my two younger brothers and me. Nothing has affected my life more than my father's alcoholism and his addiction to any form of gambling he could get his hands on. So this sort of legislation is really important to me, and I can't stand the grandstanding that I just heard from the Greens member for Brisbane. This is personal for me, and it means a lot to my caucus colleagues as well. We are serious about taking action on gambling abuse and interactive gaming in this country, and I just can't stand that sort of grandstanding on such an issue which deserves bipartisanship.

This legislation amends the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 to prohibit the use of credit cards and credit related products and digital currency as payment methods for interactive gambling services and creates a new criminal offence and civil penalty provision relating to the ban. It also provides the Australian Communications and Media Authority, ACMA, with enhanced powers to enforce the ban and other existing offences.

Almost half of Australian adults who gamble are classified as at risk of gambling harm or are already experiencing it. A greater proportion of men who gamble are classified at risk of harm—53 per cent of male gamblers compared with 37 per cent of female gamblers. At-risk gambling is highest amongst young people as well—18- to 34-year-olds. People who gamble at least weekly are significantly more likely to be classified as at risk of harm. Gambling related problems range from general harms such as relationship conflicts—and I can testify to this having seen it in my own family's life; the breakdown of my parents' marriage was clearly affected by alcohol, drug and gambling abuse—impacts on health and wellbeing and erosion of savings to crisis harms, where immediate support is required. Harms to relationship health and emotional and psychological issues abound with gambling related harm.

Six per cent or more than one million Australian adults report being harmed by someone else's gambling. Gambling doesn't just affect the gambler; it affects their family and friends. Those most commonly affected are work colleagues, families and friends. The most common harms experienced due to another person's gambling are anger, distress, hopelessness about their gambling, tension and relationship problems.

In September this year the Australian Gambling Research Centre noted that gambling is a major public policy issue in Australia and affects the wellbeing and health of Australian. It's not just about personal responsibility; it's about health and wellbeing. The social costs of gambling include adverse financial impacts, productivity loss and work impacts as well.

One in six Australian children aged 16 to 17 have participated in underage gambling in the past year. Almost half of all young people aged 18 to 19 report spending money gambling. The normalisation and widespread promotion of gambling and the increased level of access to it has led to substantial increases. We see this when we watch the football on a Friday night or sport on the weekend. You see it if you watch any free-to-air TV. Harms from online gambling have been exacerbated by sophisticated advances in technology conveying messages to consumers.

Worldwide, the use of concepts like 'responsible gambling' and 'problem gamblers' is likely to have diminished the implementation of harm minimisation measures for gambling. These measures should be developed with a public health focus, not from discredited values judgements like 'personal responsibility' and similar terminology. This is inappropriate. It has been used in the past by governments, by gambling and associated industries and even by some researchers. The results have been that revenue to gambling businesses and governments have continued but substantial levels of harm have been levelled upon the community. Industry-developed concepts such as 'responsible gambling' and 'problem gamblers' should be avoided.

Online gambling is associated with so many problems. Recently, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, of which I'm a member, completed an inquiry into online gambling and its impact on those experiencing gambling harm. I want to thank and commend the wonderful efforts of the member for Dunkley for the great work she did, ably supported by the co-chair, the member for Cowper. The committee released a bipartisan report which I think is groundbreaking and of the best reports I have ever seen in my years in parliament. You win some, you lose more is the name of the report. The committee examined the harms to individuals, families and communities caused by online gambling. Professor Sally Gainsbury, who I consider to be Australia's leading expert in this area, and her team at the University of Sydney's gambling treatment and research clinic made relevant points about this 'personal responsibility' or 'self-control' fiction in their submission to the committee's inquiry.

Most people who gamble online do not set predetermined spending limits. But Professor Gainsbury advised the committee that many people who do set online gambling spending limits later increase those limits or remove them altogether. Her findings suggest that more research is needed into this issue. She recommended that deposit limits be accompanied by more education and tools for consumers to assist them in setting affordable limits and provide resources to assist them in sticking with their intentions. Her research found that there are barriers to voluntary use of consumer protection tools, including setting deposit limits. There is a perception that these tools are something for people who have gambling problems, and most people think they can control their gambling without those tools. The inappropriate language she referred to, developed by the gambling industry, is pervasive and has been endorsed by governments at all levels and should be avoided.

Despite the high-risk status of young men, they're the most likely to have access to tools and resources and to not seek professional help for gambling or mental health problems. Young men who gamble online are more likely to gamble beyond their means, which often leads to severe mental health problems. And think about this: 18- to 34-year-old men are the most likely to do it, and that's the age when they're young fathers and are setting themselves up financially, and when young children are most exposed, most affected.

We need, as Professor Sally Gainsbury says, more targeted programs that are required to reduce gambling harms, especially towards those young men. She found that there are few appropriate treatment options for people who are experiencing online gambling problems, and we need to do so much more. She found that training is needed for health and welfare professionals to assist them to identify, screen and assist people by using individual tools and resources in treatment. Regarding advertising, she advised that broad advertising for online gambling will continue to increase public awareness and favourable attitudes towards gambling and will exacerbate gambling harms. She recommended that further actions be undertaken to reduce people's exposure to those gambling products.

The committee made many findings. There are 31 of them, and I'm not going to go through them. But they are really important, and I commend them to anyone who wants to read them. We need a comprehensive national strategy for online gambling harm reduction, informed by a public health focus and principles. Reliance on individual responsibility needs to completely go. We need early intervention and prevention measures. We need rapid take-up of these sorts of treatments, because we've had rapid take-up of online gambling, and we have the world's worst online gambling losses. This is having a devastating impact on our communities. And in communities like mine, in Ipswich, amongst working-class people, and in Logan and the Moreton Bay region that you represent, Deputy Speaker Young, this is a major problem.

Gambling disorder is a mental illness that requires more targeted care. Where services exist, shame, stigma and disjointed services are driving people away. There should be no wrong doors through which people who are experiencing gambling problems can seek help. This requires raising awareness in the general community and among frontline services. The frontline services I experienced when I was a child, a teenager and a young man were just not capable of understanding the impacts of addiction on those people suffering from that harm. They were incapable of providing familial support for family members with a parent, grandparent or loved one who was going through that problem.

We have the highest per capita online gambling losses in the world because of regulatory failure. We are told we are a culture of gamblers by the advertising budgets of multinational gambling firms that are competing for a market share of Australian losses. The truth is that we lose so much because of weak regulation of gambling. We must do more, and we must do better. The committee found that Australians demand an end to the saturation advertising of gambling products. The committee recommended a comprehensive ban on advertising for online gambling, including prohibiting all online gambling inducements and all online gambling advertising on social media and online platforms. And we'd hear the industry get back to us. There wouldn't be a member of the committee who hasn't had industry after industry contacting them saying, 'We can't do it; we'll go broke'—the same arguments the tobacco companies used again and again when tobacco advertising was banned.

The committee also recommended prohibition on all online gambling advertising and commentary on either side of sports broadcasting and during it and prohibition on all in-stadium advertising, including on uniforms. Why should little kids, running around on a rugby league ground, have gambling advertising on the back of their jerseys, or the front of their jerseys? It's simply not good enough. Prohibition should be applied to all broadcasting online gambling advertising between 6 am and 10 pm, leading to prohibition of all online gambling advertising.

We need to do better; we need to do much better. The online gambling problem is growing in this country due to the ease of fast access through mobile devices, increased proliferation of online gambling applications and changes in consumer behaviour. As the member for Moreton outlined, research has been done by Gambling Research Australia which shows that gambling harm is estimated to double in coming years. This government is committed to introducing legislation—we did this in April this year—to ban the use of credit cards for online gambling, and this bill delivers on that promise.

The bill implements recommendations from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services inquiry report from 2021. I hope the recommendations of the report I referred to, by the Social Policy and Legal Affairs Committee, are taken up in full by the government. That will make a big difference. That's the next stage and the next step of regulatory reform and reform in this country.

At the PJC inquiry, some gambling stakeholders stated that 15 to 20 per cent of customers use credit cards for online gambling. While this is a relatively small number, those who gamble with credit cards are at much greater risk, because it is so easy to do. Credit card transactions attract higher rates of interest and fees. We know this. Therefore the impact on them and their families is greater.

The bill before the chamber will bring online gambling law into line with land-based gambling laws, where credit cards have been banned from TAB outlets, casinos and poker machine venues since the early 2000s. I support leagues clubs in my community. I know how important they are. I know how important the turf club at Bundamba is. But we've just got to get a degree of regulation in this area.

This bill prohibits digital currencies for gambling use, including cryptocurrency. It prevents people buying cryptocurrency with a credit card and then using cryptocurrency to gamble. The bill provides responsible ministers with a power to proscribe other credit-related payments that come onto the market as a way of really future-proofing the legislation. People should not be gambling with money they don't have because of the impact on them and their financial security, and the impact on their family, their friends and their community. This bill aligns with the government's broader commitment to minimising harm.

The bill will prohibit an operator of a regulated wagering service from accepting payments from a customer of the service who is physically present in Australia using credit card, digital wallets, digital currency or any other method determined by the minister. I think that's a very good reform by the government, because this will prevent creative use of the online gaming industry to entice you to use whatever form of credit you can avail yourself of, and who knows what the future may hold in terms of digital capacity to gamble.

The bill creates a new criminal offence of 500 penalty units and new civil penalty provisions of 750 penalty units. It expands ACMA's compliance and enforcement powers. I commend the bill to the House, and I think it is just the first stage in more work to be done.

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