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Here’s a puzzle. The Albanese government has shown that it has the pluck to confront the world’s biggest vested interests. That’s what it did with its social media ban for under-16s.
It led the world in doing so. It not only defied the bluster and threats of big tech, it also risked the wrath of the US government. Donald Trump has sworn to protect the interests of the American tech bros and to smash any country that gets in their way.
And now the Albanese government is forging ahead with further measures, including the news media bargaining incentive, a levy on the foreign tech companies to oblige them to pay for the Australian news journalism they draw on. It was legislated in Canberra this week.
Next is the Albanese government’s proposed digital duty of care. This would require the tech companies to head off harm, at the wholesale level, before it’s done, rather than the current ambulance-like system of trying to make amends after the event, at the retail level.
These are commendable measures to civilise an industry that wantonly empowers some of the most uncivilised forces from humanity’s darkest reaches.
The puzzle: where was this courage when it came to gambling ads? The same government, with the support of the Coalition, this week legislated its much-delayed response to the Labor-led inquiry into online gambling and the ads that promote it.
The process of legislating aroused great passion. Many MPs were uneasy, even angry, at the feebleness of the reforms.
Although the bills were Labor’s, toughened by Liberal amendments, they were denounced fiercely by some Labor MPs. And five Liberal MPs, across both House and Senate, crossed the floor to vote against them, an unusual outbreak of dissent.
They were bitterly disappointed because they benchmarked the bills before them against the 2023 parliamentary inquiry to which the government was responding. That inquiry reported that, per person, Australians lose more money on online punting than any other people on Earth. Which is not the problem in itself.
“Gambling advertising is grooming children and young people to gamble and encourages riskier behaviour,” wrote the parliamentary inquiry’s chair, the late Labor MP Peta Murphy, on delivering her 2023 report. “The torrent of advertising is inescapable.” Indeed. More than half a million ads a year on TV alone, and many more online.
“It is manipulating an impressionable and vulnerable audience to gamble online.”
The report catalogued the harms of gambling addiction, including the fact that it’s associated with a quadrupling of a person’s risk of suicide.
“Any business model which encourages harm deserves to be closely scrutinised,” Murphy wrote. Her committee made 31 recommendations. Remarkably, they were endorsed unanimously by the cross-party group.
One of its most emphatic recommendations: “A phased, comprehensive ban on all gambling advertising on all media – broadcast and online, that leaves no room for circumvention … Partial bans on gambling advertising do not work. The 2017 media reforms resulted in gambling advertising on television increasing.”
So what did we get this week? A partial ban. Including a limit on gambling ads to three per hour between 5am and 8.30pm. To which the tireless anti-gambling advocate Tim Costello responds: “As if we would protect our kids with just three cigarette ads an hour.”
Another criticism was the time frame. Footy matches commonly continue after 8.30pm. The most-watched NRL events, the State of Origin games, start after 8pm.
“How many kids are going to be watching State of Origin from 8.05 to 8.30 and then go to bed at 8.30, and after 8.30 it becomes open slather?” posed Liberal senator Paul Scarr in explaining why he was crossing the floor. “It’s an absurdity and I won’t be part of it.”
Another of the Murphy report’s emphatic recommendations: “That the Australian government prohibits all online gambling inducements and inducement advertising, and that it do so without delay.”
A former NRL player blew the whistle on the inducements scam in a Senate hearing earlier this month. Free drinks and free credits are common. But Luke Bateman told of his experience: “There were times where I would be flown interstate and taken to race days, put in marquees with alcohol and food provided all day, things like that. Before getting there, your VIP manager would [say] ‘hey, mate, what drugs do you want? Do you want a couple bags for this weekend?’ ” Others told of being offered sex workers. Anything to keep them gambling.
So what did we get this week? Again, a partial ban, for problem gamblers only. And the new law says that the gambling shops are supposed to enforce it. Another Liberal floor-crosser, MP Andrew Wallace, compared this to “putting Dracula in charge of a blood bank”.
The independent senator for Canberra, David Pocock, described inducements as the “most egregious” of the online gambling industry’s methods. And as for the self-policing aspect: “That’s already the case. The Northern Territory regulator just doesn’t enforce it.”
The NT regulator, as Pocock pointed out repeatedly this week, has no full-time staff. Which helps explain why it’s become the regulatory home of choice for the betting shops. The deep north is the Wild West, and it sets the standard nationally. Which is, pretty much, no standard.
“There are a lot of disappointed people today,” says Pocock, whose policy positions are generally a fair indicator of common sense.
“It’s fascinating; the government says these are bold reforms and the biggest in the history of online gambling. But individual Labor MPs and senators look at their social media accounts. They usually post all the time. But, on this, there’s basically nothing. They’re incredibly quiet.”
There are some advances. Gambling ads are to be banned on player jerseys and in stadiums. Celebrities and players may not promote gambling. A “triple lock” system requires that users are over 18, logged in and provided with an opt-out option for receiving targeted ads.
Peta Murphy’s widower, Rod Glover, acknowledged that “our political system ultimately found a way to make progress”. The changes “will reduce harm, particularly for young people and those most vulnerable to the increasingly sophisticated ways gambling is marketed and promoted”.
Labor and Liberal were accused of selling out for political donations. But that’s not the chief reason for the reforms’ shortfall. The Murphy report said that it approached the issue through “a public health lens”. The government and opposition did not; they approached it as one element of a larger set of interests.
A senior member of the government explains the puzzle: the government could be tough on Meta and Google and TikTok because “we are not challenging the viability of their businesses by regulating them, they’re huge multinationals. But there is a belief, genuinely held across the cabinet and held by Angus Taylor, that regulating gambling ad revenues is a threat to the viability of free-to-air TV networks and a threat to the viability of the sporting codes, especially the AFL and the NRL.”
And this was uppermost in the minds of the leadership. In this way, it was, in part, an industry policy matter. Not to protect the gambling shops but to protect networks Seven, Nine (which owns this masthead) and Ten and the revenues they receive from the gambling shops.
“Free-to-air TV’s business model is shit,” says another senior member of the government. “They are in transition but we don’t want them to fall off a cliff. The information landscape is bad enough already, but it’d be a different world without the TV networks – they are still a source of credible news and information.”
The sporting codes have also developed dependencies on gambling ad revenues. The federal government already provides $540 million a year for Australian sport. A minister puts the government’s logic this way: “Free-to-air TV and the sporting codes are helpful for our democracy, for social engagement and for social cohesion.”
The government’s best calculation is that the free-to-air TV networks depend on gambling ads for 11 per cent of their revenue. “Not massive but substantial for them, and still amounting to several hundred million dollars.”
This week’s reforms will begin to wean the TV businesses and sport codes off gambling ad revenues “so a future government can go harder”, says a senior government figure. The laws have a built-in review three years hence.
David Pocock doesn’t buy the government’s reasoning.
“All right, so build that three-year phasing into these reforms. The parliament should have worked out a real transition to make sure the fourth estate, including free-to-air, is strong. A 1 per cent levy on the gambling industry could more than fund community sport and TV and plug the gap for the next 10 years. There’s no ambition or imagination.”
It’s hard to disagree with Pocock’s conclusion: “This was a missed opportunity.”
You win some, you lose more.
Peter Hartcher is political and international editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. His world column appears on Tuesdays.
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Peter Hartcher is political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.From our partners
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