ArticleThis coming Tuesday, March 24, it will be a thousand days since the Murphy report into online gambling was delivered to government. The report contained 31 recommendations, including a ban on gambling ads and inducements and the creation of a national gambling regulator.
In those thousand days, the Albanese government has failed to even respond to the report.
There are a thousand reasons to want gambling reform – that is the subject of a new campaign by the Alliance for Gambling Reform – and this is mine.
We are seeing young men aged 18 to 24 most devastated and hurt by gambling harm. Young people turning 18 this year have never known a world without free-to-air television inundated with gambling ads and odds and inducements following them online.
Now these young men and many women cannot imagine watching the AFL or NRL without associating it with a multi.
From childhood, they have been groomed to watch sport and think gambling.
NRL chairman Peter V’landys and former AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan, who now runs the betting group Tabcorp, have presided over the capture of a generation by foreign betting companies. These young adults are now in serious trouble. These sporting administrators have not only been responsible for promoting gambling along with their codes but putting it on steroids.
Even inside the game it’s having an insidious impact. Some 76.5 per cent of player managers in the AFL identify gambling among footballers as a concern.
Right at the time young men should be saving, particularly in a cost-of-living crisis, they are losing thousands of dollars to foreign betting companies, addicted just because they love their sport.
The AFL and NRL oppose the Murphy report’s recommended ban on advertising because they are reaping more than $50 million a year each from their partnership with the foreign betting companies doing the advertising.
The codes get three bites of the gambling dollar.
One is inflated television and streaming rights, which enable Foxtel/Kayo Sports and AFL partner Channel Seven and NRL partner Channel Nine to pay for those rights by pumping out more gambling ads on every match. Foreign-owned sports betting companies are happy to pay for them in return for massive punts and profits garnered through Australia’s love of sport.
Both codes threatened the Albanese government with cuts to the women’s leagues or junior football if the Murphy report is implemented. This is despite 78 per cent of AFL supporters saying they want gambling ads banned.
Second, there are massive deals between the sports betting companies with the AFL and NRL. The codes have effectively become betting companies. They are using sport, and the young people who play it and support it, to expand the gambling market. V’landys doesn’t try to hide it, even calling his beloved rugby league “gambling content” for the United States market when explaining his vision behind the NRL opening round in Vegas.
The same will happen with the new NRL team in Papua New Guinea, set up with Australian taxpayers’ money. It will be supported through gambling ads and profits in a nation with the highest rates of violence against women in the world.
The prime minister likes to say his government has done more for gambling reform than any government, as a justification for inaction on the Murphy report. Yet under his watch, Australia’s losses are the highest they’ve ever been – now $31.5 billion a year.
The prime minister’s own expert panel to end gender-based violence supported the Murphy report and a ban on gambling ads because we know that where there is gambling, family violence is three times more likely.
Thirdly, the non-profit AFL and the NRL get a cut of every bet. Their business model relies on more fans betting. As gambling on the game increases, the bonus incentives for their million-dollar executives become even more bloated.
What other non-profit has done so much damage to young people’s health?
Like tobacco, the experiment of exposing kids to gambling ads on sport in childhood has produced devastating levels of addiction.
We forget that in previous, and recent, generations, kids were protected from gambling ads during the broadcasting of sport. Gambling advertising was limited to horses or greyhounds. Now the NRL, AFL, soccer, basketball and all sports are connected to gambling ads.
Most kids were not interested in greyhounds or horses and so were spared the grooming. Today their sporting heroes and teams are treated like horses and greyhounds.
Research suggests 80 per cent of Australian 10-year-olds know the odds and the logos of sports betting companies. Hundreds of thousands of these kids are now illegally gambling underage themselves.
One report says 600,000 children – 30 per cent of 12- to 17-year-olds – are spending almost $20 million on gambling.
When 18- and 19-year-olds are included, the proportion who are spending money gambling jumps to 50 per cent. That makes gambling more popular with kids than any sporting code. When they look at the AFL or NRL app to see who their team is playing, they are told the odds on each game and encouraged to place a bet.
The prime minister likes to say his government has done more for gambling reform than any government, as a justification for inaction on the Murphy report. Yet under his watch, Australia’s losses are the highest they’ve ever been – now $31.5 billion a year.
Since then, we have seen harm explode because we have allowed a torrent of gambling advertising to be hurled at young people on television as well as on their smart devices.
Foreign betting companies are registered in the Northern Territory, where they pay little tax. Sportsbet takes $2.2 billion out of Australia without a single shopfront – it all happens online. They monitor every bet and text persistent inducements of free money if you are losing or taking a break. This is the kind of predatory behaviour that resulted in the multipartisan Murphy report recommending those inducements be banned.
The Murphy report’s first recommendation was for a national regulator. As with the rest of the report, the government has ignored this.
The de facto national regulator is the Northern Territory Racing and Wagering Commission, which was the focus of the Four Corners’ “Losing Streak” exposé. The commission had not produced an annual report for 31 years when the program tried to interview commissioners, many of whom owned racehorses and came from the industry.
It is a complete farce for the nation with the highest per capita gambling losses in the world to allow the NT’s substandard attempt at regulation to essentially leave the rest of the country open to exploitation.
The federal government could, and should, amend the Northern Territory (Self-Government) Act immediately and deal with this swiftly using its Commonwealth powers. The Australian Communications and Media Authority is a national regulator that has imposed some fines on these atrocious betting companies, but it is a watchdog for all media and is unable to keep up with the explosion of gambling ads and complaints.
Labor did implement BetStop for online gambling self-exclusion, but it is inadequate and ineffective. Of the 3.2 million Australians doing harm to themselves through gambling, only 34,000 are signed up to BetStop. This is the foundation on which Albanese rests his case.
The prime minister’s latest defence is that he banned under-16s from social media, so they shouldn’t see gambling ads. Yet they still see the ads on free-to-air television. Children watching YouTube or playing online kids games still see gambling ads pop up.
If the prime minister believes the social media ban stopped children from seeing gambling ads online, he needs to talk to a parent or child to get the facts about how the internet works and how kids use it.
When gambling advocates asked the communications minister, Anika Wells, to act on the Murphy recommendations, she reportedly told them they needed to convince wagering companies about reform, not her. Wells’s office did not deny the report.
When I attend gambling help meetings as an observer, I am always shocked at how many attending say they cannot watch or attend the football, even with their children, as the ads will trigger them. They have pleaded with wagering companies and the sporting codes but have been dismissed by those who have the power to change things.
These predatory industries have co-opted our children and captured our sport, all to enrich foreign betting companies. This alone should be reason enough for the government to act.
Tim Costello AO is Director of Ethical Voice Pty Ltd, Executive Director of Micah Australia and a Senior Fellow of Centre for Public Christianity.
For bookings, interviews, and enquiries please include admin@timcostello.org
This article was first published in The Saturday Paper.
Image from Canva.