Extract from The Guardian
I love sport. I love football. I grew up at football grounds first when my dad played for the Bombers, and after that, in Tassie where he played and coached for many years.
My aim is to protect sport, and the Australian sporting culture with it.
I therefore applaud the watershed parliamentary report recommending ads for online gambling be banned across all media and at all times within three years.
The report is blunt, direct and has not been swayed by industry players dependent on a flawed business model that targets young and vulnerable people for profit.
Most importantly, the recommendations of this multi-partisan committee are unanimous.
The broadcast TV lobby group, Free TV, arrogantly flipped the bird at community concern during submissions to the inquiry, suggesting policy can’t be made based on the “vibe”. In doing so, it conveniently ignored reams of evidence about the cost of gambling to our communities and its connection to saturation gambling ads.
Most emblematic is the fact that the fastest growing cohort of gamblers is young men aged 18-24, arguably the first cohort to grow up bombarded with gambling advertisements.
It is now up to backbenchers within the major parties to ensure there is no backsliding in the face of the committee’s disturbing findings.
The evidence is that gambling addiction increases the risk of bankruptcy, domestic violence and suicide.
The social cost of gambling in Victoria alone has been estimated at $7bn a year. Family and relationship problems were the highest cost, followed by emotional and psychological issues, including distress, depression, suicide, and violence. Financial harm was only the third highest cost.
This is just one reminder of the urgency of attacking this issue at its root.
If tax changes and such are required to mitigate the effect on the sports and the broadcasters, that should be looked at. However, I do not have a great deal of sympathy for the sporting codes, the broadcasters or the gambling companies.
Any argument that gambling revenue supports sport and is therefore sacrosanct does not stack up. A business model that relies on causing harm to people, especially children, by exploiting their love of sport, is flawed. It’s also the case that gambling on sport outside horse racing and the TAB has only been legal in Australia since 1993, so it hasn’t always been this way. There is still time to reverse course.
And the kids do not like it either.
In one study, three quarters of young people agreed that sporting codes should do more to prevent them from being exposed to sport-related gambling advertising.
We are failing these children if we do not act.
I have had youth football officials in my electorate of Goldstein tell me directly that they know the boys in their junior teams are betting on gambling apps on their phones.
I know this is happening because I hear my teenaged son and his friends talking about gambling and multis with as much authority as they talk about the finer points of the game they are watching. Winning on bets is seen as a “skill” to be admired.
The players themselves have reservations, but apart from a few courageous figures like the AFL’s Ben Brown are rarely forthright; after all, their employers have themselves become addicted to the revenue they receive from gambling outlets.
Sporting codes have been reluctant to reveal exactly how reliant they are on gambling revenue, even after being pressed repeatedly by the parliamentary committee that has just reported on our gambling culture. But if they get a cut from every bet made on their sport, there can surely be few clearer cut conflicts of interest in this conversation about the wellbeing of our young people.
What’s more important? Promoting a healthy love of sport or bleeding the fans of that sport via gambling promoted at saturation levels? Or both? Breed the love of sport and then take advantage of it.
Sport is thriving at all levels in Australia and at the elite level has gone from strength to strength.
As it was in 2017, when the previous government dipped its toe into gambling advertising reform, industry’s fundamental position was: Do nothing, nothing to see here.
Gambling advertising subsequently migrated to general programming, much of it watched by even more impressionable kids and teenagers and increased by no less than 50%.
The Guardian has read the room and responded to its readers’ antipathy to being assailed with gambling advertising by implementing a total ban across its platforms, no doubt at some cost to its bottom line.
It is well beyond time for broadcasters and sporting codes to respond.
The responses of the major beneficiaries of the swelling coffers of the mainly multinational gambling behemoths are as predictable as they are out of touch.
To fail to see that the patience of parents, supporters and players has run out could well cost them more in terms of support and revenue than accepting that this is the moment to call time on a business model that profits from harm.
Read the play. And let our kids enjoy the game.
Zoe Daniel is the independent member for Goldstein
Crisis support services can be reached 24 hours a day: Lifeline 13 11 14; Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; MensLine Australia 1300 78 99 78; Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636
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