Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

This bill would make it illegal to provide social casino services to customers in Australia. The bill would create both a criminal and a civil offence, and each day the service is provided that offence would be committed. The liability provisions target the person running the illegal sites and operate as a disincentive for the provider rather than penalising the user of the casino game.

To help enforce this ban, the bill also gives the Australian Communications and Media Authority, ACMA, the power to apply for Federal Court injunctions against carriage service providers to block domain names, URLs and IP addresses of online locations which provide prohibited gambling and casino services to Australians. This would make it more difficult for Australian internet users to find and use websites which offer the illegal gambling. The injunction can also require an online search engine provider to take reasonable steps to remove a search result which refers users to the online location of the prohibited service. For example, these injunctions from ACMA could prevent Google from displaying results which lead players to prohibited social casino websites, and this would make the ban more effective. The injunction power would also protect users from unregulated offshore gambling providers and Australian-run casino sites who advertise to Australians directly through social media. While this, in fact, is currently prohibited by the Interactive Gambling Act, it would now be enforceable.

I need to explain these social casinos, because I suspect most people have never heard of them and are quite unfamiliar with the problems they cause. Social casinos are games of chance or mixed chance and skill, which are played on social media platforms, like Facebook, on websites and in downloaded apps. In these virtual casinos, players are enticed with free chips and credits, which might be reloaded periodically, but encouraged to purchase additional credits to continue to play or engage in higher stake bets. For example, this includes casino games like roulette, blackjack or even poker machine simulators, which might start free but will then require people to buy chips to continue to gamble with, and once the game is over the player cannot cash out any money, even if they've won money. In other words, you pay to play, with no prospect of any cash return.

Online casino games are, in fact, illegal in Australia, but social casinos fall into a grey area. Currently, social casino games are classed as entertainment, so they are not subject to any gambling regulations. These online games seem innocuous, but the outcomes are not. Players can lose just as much money on a social casino as in a physical casino. Social casino games can also pave the way for problematic gambling, because they normalise gambling behaviours, increase the player's confidence in winning and make gambling seem more socially acceptable and risk-free. This not only instils false confidence in players and encourages greater spending on social casinos but also primes players for movement on to more serious gambling sites. Not only that—ads for real gambling services are often embedded into the social media platform hosting the social casino, which actively encourages players to move across to other betting websites.

These kinds of games also pose a risk to children and to young adults, whether they are using a parent's credit card to purchase the chips or just playing for free. Australian research has found that gambling-like games on social media effectively prepare children for gambling with real money later in life, because they familiarise underage users with how to play casino games. Even if the underage player is not spending real currency, the simulated casino game can make young people more susceptible to gambling mechanics, to psychological tricks and to addiction. When they turn 18 and can enter a real casino, or when they have access to finances to fund more online gambling, they will be more susceptible to real gambling and psychological addiction, because they've been primed or groomed for it.

Talking more broadly, Australia has a gambling problem. Way too many Australians are gambling addicts, and far too often they are losing the lot and even losing their lives. In fact, credible research shows that at least 400 Australians suicide each and every year on account of their gambling addiction. Australians are the world's biggest gambling losers per capita, losing more than $1,200 per year. In May, the Financial Review reported a significant spike in gambling during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, with data from some organisations revealing a 114 per cent increase in online gambling transactions during the pandemic. Gambling counselling services say they are seeing an increase in demand, despite clubs and casinos having been closed during the coronavirus lockdown. Online gambling carries similar risks to traditional gambling services, including addiction and subsequent physical and mental health implications. It also carries heightened risks, due to ease of access to and use of mobile devices. As my friend former senator Nick Xenophon used to say, 'With online gambling, you could lose your home without ever needing to leave it.' In addition, gambling research shows that in times of great emotional or financial stress people are more likely to lose more money, making the COVID-19 pandemic a perfect storm for online gambling losses.

It beggars belief, then, that one of the first things that state and territory governments are wanting to open up is poker machine venues. Frankly, it is unconscionable of the New South Wales government, in particular, to think that poker machine venues are one of the most important things and one of the places to most urgently open up to the public in large numbers. I would remind members in this place that, on poker machines alone, Australians lose almost $1 billion each and every month. So, in the two or three months of shutdown of poker machine venues in this country, Australians have avoided losing between $2,000 million and $3,000 million.

I would remind honourable members that 40 per cent of the money that's lost is lost by gambling addicts. In other words, during the pandemic, because poker machine venues have been closed, gambling addicts have not lost about $400 million each and every month during the closure. That governments would think they should open these venues in a hurry simply beggars belief, but it just goes to show again how politicians, political parties and governments are beholden to the gambling industry, an industry which is very generous when it comes to political donations—in fact, the gambling industry has donated millions of dollars to the political parties and to candidates in recent years. Of course, no-one donates money in that order of magnitude without expecting a return on that investment, and what a return on that investment we're seeing right now, especially in New South Wales but also in other jurisdictions where politicians are falling all over each other to approve the reopening of gambling venues.

I'd just remind honourable members: when we talk about gambling reform, when we talk about ways to make gambling safer, when we talk about ideas like banning social casinos, we need to remember this isn't simply about numbers—machine numbers, gambling numbers, dollar numbers. It's about real people. This place has a moral responsibility to protect our fellow citizens, and let's not forget that the tens of thousands of gambling addicts in this country, many of whom will suicide, are our mums and our dads and our brothers and our sisters and our sons and our daughters and our work colleagues and the people we pass on the street. If there's one thing people in this place can do to make this country a better place, it is to put in place the simple mechanisms to help protect those people: harm minimisation measures like, on poker machines, $1 maximum bets, slower spins and banning addictive features; tougher penalties for venues that don't follow the law; and precommitment systems so when people hit their self-imposed limit they're cut out of that gambling system, and not just with poker machines but also with online gambling, where precommitment systems are not linked between websites when they really need to be.

I would ask the government, and I ask the minister through you, Deputy Speaker, to seriously consider this reform today: that we ban social casinos. They're effectively real casinos, which are banned. This is something a government could do and could do quickly. Thank you.

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

Is the motion seconded?

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

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

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.