Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to speak about the devastating damage that gambling addiction causes to individuals, families and children in my community. Recently, I attended and spoke at a Settlement Services International gambling prevention forum in Craigieburn. The forum brought together stakeholders and community leaders in my local core community to discuss challenges and strategies in promoting responsible gambling practices within our diverse, multicultural communities as an important way of fostering collaboration and understanding and, in doing so, make a vital and significant impact on reducing the harmful effects of gambling. During the forum, I reflected on the scourge that gambling is and the wreckage addiction causes to the lives of my constituents, and I also paid tribute to the many wonderful people in service deliveries who fight daily battles to reach those in need and give them a helping hand in order to raise them out of their despair.

Twenty-three years ago, during my first term as the member for Calwell, the installation of pokies was a sought-after business plan for many of our struggling local sports clubs, who saw it as a way of staying financially afloat, and it was a lucrative one, of course, for the pubs and other social venues. A proposal by the North Melbourne Football Club sought to install pokie machines in the Broadmeadows Town Hall. The idea was that it would be a win-win situation for both the North Melbourne Football Club and the Hume City Council and, by extension, the local community. However, this proposal was successfully scuttled by residents, outraged at the idea of the town hall being used for gambling purposes, while being packaged as a social and cultural benefit to all. With the Broadmeadows Progress Association in the lead, a broad and united coalition of culturally diverse residents and our local interfaith leaders joined the many protests that were held outside the Broadmeadows Town Hall. The pressure against the proposal was so great that the idea was eventually abandoned by the council and by the club.

Not long after the North Melbourne pokies proposal, Tattersalls launched an advertising campaign named From Broadmeadows to Broadway. Billboards went up everywhere, including TV, buses and trams. Our community was outraged at the stereotyping of Broadmeadows and the many assumptions and presumptions held by the advertisements and responded with their own local campaign, called Broadmeadows and Proud. They pushed back against the stereotyping of Broadmeadows by displaying the pride our community felt about living in Broadmeadows. Whilst we won these battles in early 2002, we have not won the war. The arguments against pokies and other gambling models that were so forcibly articulated by the community then still resonate today. They are just as relevant and just as powerful.

Our local community continues to be a vulnerable and disadvantaged community. The latest data shows we are eighth in Victoria for socioeconomic hardship. The Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation released data that shows that in the city of Hume, a staggering amount of $380,906 is spent on pokies per day. That's $139,030,852 per year.

Hume, which is the municipality in my electorate of Calwell, has the third-highest pokies expenditure in Victoria. We have 14 venues. Between them, they have 833 pokie machines. With a regional cap in place of 851 pokie machines, that's 98 per cent of allowable pokie machines, and it's 4.3 pokie machines per 1,000 adults.

For vulnerable people, gambling has a habit-forming allure. It promises an economic ease and benefit that will enable a happy life—a short fix for their hardships, both economic and personal. But gambling is an addiction, and it rarely ever delivers its promises. Countless individuals and their families have suffered catastrophic financial losses, losses of homes and breakups of families and relationships, and it contributes to the ongoing mental health crisis. Gambling preys on vulnerable people, using sophisticated and subtle psychology, and is behavioural in its approach. It relies on advertising to sell a dream which more often becomes a nightmare.

My community fought against billboards and other means of more conventional advertising 20 years ago. Today's digital and online platforms and free-to-air TV provide the gambling industry with an unstoppable capacity to reach into every corner of our community and our lives. Alarmingly, there is a capacity for a more direct access to young people and to children. Today, we are witnessing alarming rates of addiction, whether it's gambling, alcohol or drugs. And these addictions are also associated with mental health disorders. Regardless of what people think of gambling, it's never just recreational and social in its focus and entertainment. Vulnerable people are easy prey and become victims. And, as we advance further in our digital platforms, advertising casts a wider net with its allure.

This is where governments have a responsibility to stay ahead of the game and legislate where and when necessary, especially when research into harm and data collection tells us just how dire the situation is. The online gambling inquiry, which was conducted by the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs and chaired by the late Peta Murphy, the member for Dunkley—and I acknowledge the present member for Dunkley in the chamber with us today—made 31 recommendations. Evidence that was taken during its public hearings and the hundreds of submissions it received laid bare the ugly truth.

We know the government is closely considering all 31 recommendations of the final report, and we do expect the release of a comprehensive response. But, on the very important issue of gambling advertising, the government has made it clear that the status quo is untenable, and it's consulting on a model that prioritises reducing the exposure of children to gambling advertising, tackling the unacceptable level of gambling ads during live sport and restricting wagering providers from targeting and saturating Australians with advertisements. The pressing issue here, and the essence of my grievance, is that the most effective response is a model involving a total ban on advertising. I've received many letters from my constituents in relation to this issue. My position is in step with theirs.

At the gambling forum I attended, we heard from one of my constituents, Merapi, who spoke about her and her husband's 20-year battle with gambling. Merapi uses her lived experience to help others. Her story is typical. Her encounter with the allure of gambling began by accident. Merapi and her friend had some time to kill between errands, so they walked into a nearby venue with pokies. She had never tried pokies before and decided, 'What the heck, let's have a go.' By chance, Merapi won the jackpot of the day, and so overwhelmed was she by what seemed like an easy win that she began a 20-year struggle with pokies. She eventually moved with her husband and children from New Zealand to Australia to hopefully help break the habit, only to find that it was easier to gamble here. The result of her addiction—and her husband's, who was also a gambler—saw them move to nine different houses, the repossession of their car and a life trapped in a constant struggle for the next jackpot. Merapi reflected on the miracle of at least keeping her family together. Today she enjoys a better and healthier life with her family and her grandchildren, and she dedicates her time to helping others.

I urge the government to adopt all 31 recommendations—in particular, recommendation 26 of the report, which calls for the government, in cooperation with the states and territories, to implement a comprehensive ban on all forms of advertising for online gambling.

The government, in its consideration, should not yield to the claims made by the gambling industry and the TV advertising market that to ban online ads will have a negative cost to the industry. Keith, from my electorate, wrote the following: 'The total TV advertising market, which includes all metropolitan free-to-air, regional free-to-air and catch-up TV, recorded revenue of $3.3 billion for the 2023-24 financial year. The commercial TV lobby, Free TV, estimates gambling ads contributed around $200 million of that revenue. This is just six per cent. Free-to-air television, for what it's worth, is not going to fold if they do not get the gambling revenue.' He finishes by saying, 'Bite the bullet and ban it.' Many other constituents have written to me requesting the same thing, and I urge the government to respond with a total ban on online advertising as the only way to address this scourge in our community.