OPINION
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The ancient occupation of gambling has been much in the news. We all gamble in the course of our lives, often in minor ways. Do I have time to go to the toilet before that saucepan boils over? Other gambles may prove deadly. If I accelerate now, can I pass that yellow light before it turns red?
Gambling, and its prolific online advertising, which is concentrating the thoughts of our body politic just now, is a corollary of our connectedness. We can, at the touch of a button, gamble on endless and varied sporting outcomes.
Disturbingly, a proportion of gambling advertising is being directed at children. Children grow up with gambling enmeshed in the sports they play and watch, and the internet offers innovative ways to market to them.
One study of Victorian secondary school students found almost a third had gambled in the previous 30 days. Over the past decade, Deakin University’s Prof Samantha Thomas, a public health sociologist, has spoken with thousands of young Australians and their parents about gambling. She found children as young as eight thought the content of gambling ads appealing and have high brand awareness and detailed recall of the content of those ads.
Australians, it is said, will gamble on anything. Only rarely are the results beneficial to society, as in the case of Davis Walsh, who is an Australian businessman, professional gambler and in the end, philanthropist. If you have been living on another planet, he established and maintains MONA, the Tasmanian Museum of Old and New Art.
Few ordinary punters could match Walsh’s gambling enterprise. We know that if we gamble long enough, most of us will lose all our money. But for some, gambling is compulsive. They experience an uncontrollable urge to keep playing the odds, despite the toll. Gambling means you’re willing to risk something you value in the hope of getting something of greater value. It can stimulate the brain’s reward system like drugs or alcohol, leading to addiction.
Gambling interests in this state are represented by a body called, ironically Responsible Wagering Tasmania. Gambling is a heavily regulated industry, and thus a major influencer of politicians, by way of paid lobbyists and donations to political parties. Tasmanians will remember the storm of faux protest over the Tasmanian Labor Party’s somewhat naive pre-election promise in 2018 to ban pokies on licensed premises.
The Tasmanian Liberal Party, to its eternal shame, joined cause with the Tasmanian Hospitality Association and the Farrell family, which had held an exclusive licence over poker machines in 12 hotels, and the casinos in Launceston and Hobart. Labor was smashed by a heavily funded advertising campaign, Love Your Local, and exaggerated rumours about the job losses attendant on a ban.
Across the country, gambling accounts for less than 1% of gross value added to the economy, and over 10% of political donations. Tasmanians lose over $500,000 a day in poker machines. In 2022/23, Tasmanians lost $189.6 million to the pokies. Up to 57,000 Tasmanians are harmed by someone else’s gambling. Tasmanian contacts with Gamblers Help increased by 33% in 2022/23.
Is there anything good to be said about gambling? To some, lotteries offer hope. My local IGA has a license to sell lottery tickets and it is a very busy space. The people buying tickets are ordinary citizens. The Sydney Opera House was built on the proceeds of a lottery. And who has never bought a raffle ticket? The Middleton Fire Brigade used to raffle a trailer load of firewood during the annual Middleton Country Fair. They used the money to purchase equipment.
Curiously, the Catholic Church holds the position that there is no moral impediment to gambling, so long as it is fair, all bettors have a reasonable chance of winning, there is no fraud involved, and the parties involved do not have actual knowledge of the outcome of the bet (unless they have disclosed this knowledge), and as long as the following conditions are met: the gambler can afford to lose the bet, and stops when the limit is reached, and the motivation is entertainment and not personal gain.
Bingo, anyone?
John Fleming II
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