Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank Senator Henderson and the opposition for bringing this bill forward. Any constructive attempt to deal with gambling harm is to be welcomed, and any debate in this place that emphasises and elevates the issue of gambling harm is to be welcomed, because gambling causes harm. Gambling destroys lives, and gambling destroys families. The fact that gambling has been normalised in our society is just insidious.

There's a reason as to why gambling has been normalised in our society; it's because some of the most powerful people in our country, some of the biggest corporations, are making a huge amount of money from it. And those people are very influential, politically. The level of gambling donations to both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party is extraordinary. State governments are addicted to money from poker machines, and other governments are addicted to revenue from gambling. It's why we have not seen action on gambling.

Anybody with an ounce of sense looking at the absolute escalation of gambling and gambling harm that has been occurring in Australia would see that there's a very sensible way forward, and that's to actually acknowledge that gambling causes harm and that gambling needs to be managed on a harm minimisation basis. If we had governments doing that, there would be a whole suite of measures that would be brought into play to manage gambling, with a harm minimisation approach.

The bill that we are discussing today is just one small thing that could be done. It is rather ironic to hear the people from the opposition now speaking out about the harms of gambling. It's almost as if they weren't in government for the last nine years. There was so much that could have been done by the previous government that wasn't done. It's also extraordinary to hear the government talking about the things that they are doing—'Yes, we're going to be doing this'—knowing how much they have been dragging their feet. They're not treating this with the urgency that is required.

Senator White just talked about BetStop. How long is it taking for BetStop to be introduced? It is extraordinary. Questions were asked about it at estimates and it is very much on the backburner. The rollout is happening extraordinarily slowly. We have seen the conflicts of interest from this government—just like previous governments—because of the donations that they accept from gambling companies, how they are dragging their feet in taking action. The minister meeting and taking donations from gambling companies is just the most obvious example of that in recent times.

We need to be managing gambling with a harm minimisation approach. We need to be taking action because, as I said, gambling is destroying lives and the community knows this. The community knows that we need to be taking action on gambling advertisements. We need to be banning all gambling advertisements, just like, with a harm minimisation approach, we banned advertising for cigarettes decades ago because we knew that advertising and normalising those cigarettes was doing harm and encouraging people to smoke. That is what is going on with gambling advertising, and it is causing a huge amount of harm.

I do, however, think that's it good that we have—and I congratulate—the House of Representatives inquiry into online gambling and reducing gambling harm, which is happening at the moment. I really want to thank the people who have taken the time to be putting submissions into this inquiry, particularly the Alliance for Gambling Reform for their powerful submission to the House of Representatives inquiry. They have done some excellent work in collecting information about what the impacts of gambling advertising and gambling are. It's really powerful to read their submissions and to hear the stories, of people who have experienced gambling harm, which were collected in their submissions.

What's really important in this debate is to recognise the lives that are being damaged. From my time as a local councillor, when we were having to deal with planning applications for poker machine venues and were hearing the stories from local residents who were having their lives destroyed by having a pokie venue on every corner, the thing that really struck home was that gambling has real-life impacts. Gambling advertising and that insidious normalisation of gambling has real-life impacts. I want to share with you some of the stories that the Alliance for Gambling Reform shared in their submission.

The first story is from Mark in Victoria. He says, 'I have been exposed to some form of betting all my life, in one way or another; however, the betting problem became more prevalent from the mid-nineties onwards. Looking back, it probably became a serious problem from 2006 onwards, but it was not a serious financial issue until I lost my main source of income in November 2012.

'The constant advertising of betting agencies and easy access to credit cards saw me accumulate a large debt, which I did not have the ability to repay, and ended up with me stealing money from my employer to feed my addiction. It was not until I was sentenced to three years in jail that the reality hit me. I have lost a reputation which took me 40 years to build, lost my home of 20 years, lost my 23-year marriage and am currently classified as secondary homeless.'

Mark says, 'From my experience, I feel there are two main ways of reducing the impact that gambling is having on society. First, we need to get the banks to put a block on transfer of funds from credit cards to betting agencies. This includes using credit cards at poker machine venues. Secondly, I feel we need to get government approval to speak to 15- and 16-year-olds at school and warn them of the dangers of becoming addicted to gambling and the consequences they face if they go down that path. Yes, we can talk to people who are already struggling with this disease, but I feel it is more important to help not get started in the first place.'

Then he says, 'I applied for my working-with-children card to be renewed and, if successful, would be only too pleased to be involved with educating the teenagers of today.' These are really constructive suggestions from Mark, and they go to the need to be stopping the harm from happening in the first place.

Just like nicotine addiction through smoking, the recognition that we need to stop young people taking up a smoking habit leads to all of the measures that are being put in place to stop that addiction occurring—similarly, with gambling. If you have the constant barrage of gambling advertisements, it is just encouraging young people—and older people—to see gambling as something that is a normal part of life and leads to their addiction.

Another story is from Jacob in New South Wales. He says, 'I am 34 -years old and I have suffered from a sports gambling addiction for 15 years. Since quitting gambling in 2017, I have shared my story to raise awareness around gambling harm. Whilst this is never easy and involved a huge amount of bravery and vulnerability, I did this because I believed it needed to be done. My gambling addiction crept up on me, and it was a slow and gradual demise. I believe this can happen to anybody. Not only did gambling impact me financially but it also impacted me in many other ways. Relationships with partners, family and friends all suffered.

'My working career suffered because I often gambled whilst I was at work. Gambling became my safety blanket, so any troubles in my life were ignored, and gambling at the time seemed to solve those issues. But, of course, they were only making them worse. Most importantly, gambling made me become a truly horrible version of myself. Through recovery, I have learnt so much about myself: what are my strengths, weaknesses, best traits. When I gambled, I was selfish, grumpy, shut off, unhappy. I didn't know who I was as a person. Gambling halted both my personal growth and my career growth without even realising.

'I tried to stop gambling multiple times. Sometimes I would go weeks, even months. There were several times when I was trying to stop when gambling companies would email or SMS, enticing me to bonus bets if I deposited again with them. I also remember having a dedicated VIP manager who would often contact me with bonus bet deals and offers if I deposited a certain amount with them that weekend.

'At the time I wasn't aware how I can now look back and see how wrong this is. This is still going on today. It makes me feel sick thinking about it. The amount of gambling-related advertisements in Australia is not only worrying but sickening. Whilst the ads will not entice me to ever gamble again, they do normalise gambling and provide a constant reminder of gambling. The frequency needs to be reduced and there need to be restrictions on when ads can be aired. Exposing families with young kids to gambling during the six o'clock news or The Bachelor is wrong. There needs to be further education for children around the harm that gambling can cause. We have a lot of work to do. Gambling is ingrained in Australian culture, and there needs to be work done to ensure that our younger generations aren't falling into the same trap that I and many others do.'

I have another story that I don't think I'm going to have time to share with you today, but it's very clear that the impact that gambling is causing, the harm it is causing across this country, is real and it is destroying people.

What would it mean to be managing gambling, to actually be doing something to address that culture of gambling in Australia? As I said, the first thing we need to do is to acknowledge that gambling is causing harm, that gambling is addictive and that, as a harm, it needs to be managed under a harm minimisation approach. I have asked the Department of Health and Aged Care whether they are doing anything looking at gambling as a health issue, and the response has been absolutely blank stares. Clearly, from governments of both sides, this basic way forward, of looking at gambling as a harm and something to be managed using a harm minimisation approach, is not occurring.

There is a lot that we could be doing. What's being proposed in this bill, to limit gambling advertising, is a start. The Greens' position is that we should be banning all gambling advertising, including on TV, on radio and online—everywhere. Particularly, however, we need to be taking a really comprehensive approach. We need a national independent gambling regulator who will take meaningful action and ensure that there's a coordinated approach so that companies can't exploit different frameworks between jurisdictions. We need to be regulating online gambling to reduce gambling harms, with mandatory precommitment and a universal exclusion scheme across all platforms. We need to be regulating gambling in video games, with a prohibition on loot boxes being available to people under 18. In particular, we need to end the grip of the gambling industry on politics. We need to ban political donations from the gambling industry and restrict politicians and public servants from having that revolving door of working for the gambling industry. These changes are possible, and they are necessary if we are going to tackle the scourge that gambling is causing in our society. We can be doing more. We must be doing more. Otherwise the harm is just going to continue. People's lives are going to continue to be destroyed.

The level of losses is extraordinary. I've got some data on the losses. This is just for poker machine losses as an estimated proportion of annual gross income by local government areas in Victoria a few years ago. This is just poker machine losses. The municipality in Victoria which has the greatest losses is the City of Greater Dandenong, which is not a rich municipality. Most people in Greater Dandenong are just getting by. But, for people who are gambling on poker machines in the City of Greater Dandenong, the average loss was over 20 per cent of their income. I think about how many of these people would be just existing either on minimum wages or on income support, already living in poverty, on poverty payments. Yet they are shelling out 20 per cent of their income on poker machines, and you can bet those bottom dollars that that's not going to be their only gambling losses. If they are losing 20 per cent of their income on poker machines, no doubt they are gambling on sports and across the board as well.

This is causing huge harm. It's a huge economic harm for us, and we've got all of the personal harm that's being felt across the country. Think of that money that is being spent on gambling that is going into the pockets of these massively wealthy gambling companies. It's money that is not being spent on other more constructive things. It's money that's not being spent on food. It's money that's not being spent on other productive activities in our society.

This is a really core issue that we need to be facing as a parliament. The Greens are up to taking the actions that I've outlined. Let's use this level of interest in addressing gambling to actually get serious, to actually take the comprehensive approach to reduce gambling harm and to get the action that we need so that we can be minimising gambling harm, we can be helping people to recover from gambling harm and we can be really getting action on this incredibly important issue.