Senate debates

Thursday, 23 March 2023

Questions without Notice: Take Note of Answers

Gambling Advertising

3:29 pm

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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (Senator Watt) to a question without notice I asked today relating to gambling harm.

Frankly, Minister Watt's answers were pathetic—totally pathetic. We have so much harm from gambling that is being experienced by people in this country through losses from gambling. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimates that Australians lost approximately $25 billion on legal forms of gambling in 2018-19. Those are the largest per capita losses in the world. The Australian Communications and Media Authority said that 11 per cent of Australians gamble online. In my home municipality of Maribyrnong, I know that the average losses per adult are $1,000 a year. Most of the adults I know don't gamble at all, so that means the gambling losses of the people who can least afford to lose money are massive. There's such huge damage and harm being done to people in Australia today by gambling.

My question to Minister Watt went to three very straightforward actions that governments can take to limit the harm of gambling. One is to ban gambling advertising; 70 per cent of Australians want to see gambling advertising banned. They want it to be banned everywhere and all the time, and yet, in response to my question on whether the government would ban gambling advertising, Minister Watt said that we have to make sure that gambling promotions were being presented in a responsible manner. Come on! That just does not cut it. We know that the damage done by gambling advertising is very similar to the damage that was done by tobacco advertising decades ago. Governments were finally moved to ban tobacco advertising, and we need to have a strong commitment to ban gambling advertising now.

The second area that I put forward as being necessary to limit the harm from gambling was to ban donations from gambling companies. We know the insidious harm and the influence that those gambling donations have. We have stark evidence of this from the Minister for Communications: the minister who manages online gambling accepted almost $20,000 in donations to her own election campaign before the last election. That is outrageous and shows absolutely the influence of the gambling companies on this government. And yet, in response to the question about whether the government would consider banning donations, the minister went off on some complete deflection and tried to equate the fact that the Greens received donations from somebody who made money out of beating the house at gambling to the Greens receiving donations from gambling companies. It's like trying to equate getting a donation from a smoker to receiving donations from the tobacco industry! It's a complete irrelevancy, and it just shows the lack of focus and commitment by this government to reduce the influence of the gambling companies. We know the insidious influence that they have.

The third area where we need to have action that I proposed to the government was to introduce a national gambling regulator to regulate the online gambling that is doing so much harm. Online gambling occurs nationally and internationally, so we need to have national regulation to reduce the harm from online gambling. Instead, we got a commitment to another inquiry. If you don't want to do anything, well look into it, 'We're going to have another inquiry!' If you talk to any advocate, anybody who knows about the harm being caused by gambling, they'll tell you that we don't need another inquiry. We need a national gambling regulator to regulate gambling in this country. There's a need for action on gambling at all levels of government—local, state and federal. At the state government level, state governments right across the country are taking action. If you live in New South Wales, you have the opportunity to vote for the Greens on Saturday, and they have an election platform that would really tackle gambling issues. They want to phase out poker machines, introduce a cashless gambling card, introduce a pokies super profit tax and ban political donations from gambling companies.

These are the sorts of measures that need to happen, and these are the sorts of measures that the Greens are willing to take action on at the local, state and federal government levels. And they're the sorts of measures that this government really needs to take seriously.

Question agreed to.