Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

To our compendium of public health problems, including smoking, diabetes and social isolation, we can now add gambling. Gambling harm travels with other health issues—30 per cent of those seeking treatment for alcohol and other drug or mental health issues are experiencing gambling. It means that clinicians like doctors and front-line healthcare providers need to pointedly ask about gambling when seeing patients with substance misuse or mental health issues, including suicidality, or patients may not disclose their gambling harm.

Australians lose the most money to online gambling per capita in the world. That's a position on a league table that I do not wish to have. Imagine having an additional $25 billion in our national deposit account—the skills, the businesses or the recreational opportunities that have been lost. Like smartphones, online gambling is pervasive, and it has insinuated itself into homes, families and relationships, tearing them apart. In 2022, 44 per cent of adults reported gambling on sports or racing in the past year, and, of those, most have placed a bet using a smartphone or a computer. Of those who gambled on either sports racing or electronic games, two out of three were at risk of harm.

The harms to the hip pocket and relationships are well recognised, but less so are the neurological impacts. Repeated gambling can cause fundamental changes to the brain's reward prioritisation and stress systems, which are similar to those observed in addiction to psychoactive substances. In other words, it rewires your brain, and not in a good way. The mental health impacts can progress to the most severe forms, including suicidality. Gambling is associated with an approximately four times higher risk of suicide. Financial Counselling Australia reported that 80 per cent of specialist gambling financial counsellors had clients talking about suicide, and 48 per cent had clients who had attempted to take their lives.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 10 : 38 to 11 : 03

One parent at the recent parliamentary inquiry into online gambling said:

The impacts of gambling on the young generation will be ever lasting … My son fell into the trap after having a couple of wins. Those wins turned into losses and those losses are then chased until there is nothing left but tears and worry and depression.

Findings from the ACMA reveal that online gambling is the fastest-growing segment of the industry in Australia, with more than one in 10 Australians in 2022 having engaged in some form of online gambling over the past six months. The rate of harm among online gamblers is three times higher than among non-online gamblers. In other words, online gambling is more accessible and more dangerous.

The proposed legislation introduces a ban on the use of credit cards for Australian licensed interactive wagering services and the use of credit cards linked to a digital wallet, such as Apple Pay or Google Play. This will bring online wagering into line with land based gambling laws, where credit cards have been banned from TAB outlets, casinos and poker machine venues for more than a decade. Australian consumers deserve the same protections whether they are wagering on land or online. Australians should not be able to gamble with money they don't have, especially in a system that is stacked against them.

The bill also creates a new criminal offence and civil penalty provision related to the ban. Companies who do not enforce the ban will face steep fines of over $234,000. The Australian Communications and Media Authority, ACMA, will also be provided with stronger powers to enforce the ban and existing offences under the act. These reforms are evidence based and have been welcomed by the Australian Banking Association and the Alliance for Gambling Reform. Most importantly, there is a groundswell of community support for them. A recent survey by the Banking Association found that over 80 per cent of Australians believed gambling with credit cards should be restricted or banned, and we agree. The impact of online gambling on an individual and their loved ones can be devastating. Evidence also shows that those who gamble with credit cards are at greater risk of gambling harm and it occurs in a short period of time. It's just too easy to use money that you do not have on an interface that sees into your soul, bombarding you with targeted ads, bright lights and pop-ups.

Credit card transactions are also associated, obviously, with high interest rates and fees, which snowballs the financial burden. The economic burden is a drag on the individual and their loved ones, who are often swept into this swell. Gambling sends out concentric circles of harm to loved ones, with six people affected by high-risk gambling, three by moderate gambling and one by low-risk gambling. The point is that all levels of gambling are associated with impacts on others. The stigma of gambling reduces people to silence or pushes them to suicide. One witness said:

I didn't lose everything, but I always carry the scar of the harm that it caused me. I always have to fight the 'stupid, loser' voice in my head.

A joint study by Federation University and the Coroner's Court of Victoria found that 184 of nearly 5,000 suicide deaths in the state between 2016 and 2019 were gambling related.

Online gambling has been supercharged by the pandemic, fuelled by a combination of confinement boredom, access to early-release super—that was a disaster—and financial worry, fertilised with a bombardment of marketing. Who are the people who've been affected? A study conducted during the early phase of the pandemic in 2020 found that most gambling was online and that young men 18 to 34 years old were the most likely subgroup to sign up and increase their activity and monthly spending, from $687 to $1,075. This is one pandemic hangover we do not need to have. Clearly, bold and decisive reform is drastically needed and needed quickly, which is why we are acting.

This bill complements the suits of reforms by the Albanese government. These include BetStop, a national self-exclusion register for online wagering, which allows people to self-exclude from all telephone and online gambling from three months to a lifetime. Registering with BetStop is free of charge and done through a single transaction and covers every single one of the 150 Australian interactive wagering service providers. This is a significant reform, as it provides vulnerable consumers with the power to self-exclude from online wagering and to exclude themselves from the harms associated as well.

The government is considering the recommendations from the parliamentary inquiry into online gambling and its impacts on those experiencing harm. This excellent report includes 31 recommendations that apply a public health lens to online gambling in order to reduce harm from children all the way through to adults. One of these recommendations is for the Australian government, with the cooperation of the states and territories, to implement a ban on all forms of advertising for online gambling, to be introduced in four phases over three years. This bill, in conjunction with the other actions of the Albanese government, will minimise the harm from online gambling. For many Australians, it will be life changing and even life saving. I commend this bill to the House.

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