Blow up the pokies, but if gambling ads are banned, what’s next?

On the question of banning things for adults – even things that, to some at least, can be dangerous – I’m no fan.

The period between the grand finals of both footy codes and the Melbourne Cup is one of peak saturation for the corporate betting companies advertising across television, radio and social media. Come the first Tuesday in November, nearly everyone in the country will know what Joel Caine and his cohort of fellow bookie spruikers fancy in anything from the Melbourne Cup to the US presidential election.

All of this is entirely fascinating. Not because we live in a world where it matters what Caine’s opinions are about matters of the punt, but because 35 years ago none of this even existed. Thirty-five years ago, you had the TAB, bookmakers at the races and illegal SP variants haunting the dark, smoke-filled backrooms of some pubs.

Leave aside Footy Tab, there was no sports betting, not in NSW anyway. There was no Sportsbet, Ladbrokes or Betfair. And you couldn’t simply go to the TAB to bet on tennis, darts or Austrian finger-wrestling.

Jump forward to now and certain sections of society are worried we have a looming catastrophe on our hands. Forget Caine, we’ve even had Samuel L. Jackson extolling the virtues of a particular sports bookmaker.

In June 2023, the federal government’s Inquiry into Online Gambling and its Impacts on those Experiencing Gambling Harm, commissioned on a referral from federal Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth, published its final report. The inquiry was, to put not too fine a point on things, rather damning of sports betting and its apparent harms.

There’s a special flavour of nonsense that’s enveloped discussion of bans on sports-betting advertising.Credit: Simon Letch

Since then, the prospect of banning all gambling advertising from our screens, be they wall-mounted or hand-held, has become a bit of a political and sociological circus, which is what invariably happens when the Greens become involved.

Governments don’t commission inquiries in a vacuum in a way that throws caution to the wind as to the likely suggested reforms – they’re somewhat pre-ordained by the questions the government seeks answers to. Terms of reference are, usually, framed as a window through which the recommendations can be seen already. This inquiry, chaired by the late Peta Murphy MP, was no different.

The scope of the inquiry included directing that it examine (a) the effectiveness of existing consumer protections aimed at reducing online gambling harm; and (b) the effectiveness of current gambling advertising restrictions on limiting children’s exposure to gambling products and services (that is, the promotion of betting odds during live sport broadcasts), including consideration of the impact of advertising through social media, sponsorship or branding from online licensed gambling operators.

With hardly a skerrick of surprise, the inquiry in 2023 recommended to government that it should enact laws to demand a phased-in prohibition on gambling advertising: no more wall-to-wall Samuel L. Jackson, no more pithy Sportsbet adverts, and no more perfunctory but useless warnings to gamble responsibly.

Hollywood star Samuel L Jackson has been spruiking a sports bookmaker.Credit: Getty Images

What’s lost in this morass is the folly of the government controlling what people can be told, and the usurping of the freedom of free will. There’s a special flavour of nonsense that’s enveloped by the idea that the banning of sports-betting advertising might somehow make sports betting disappear, with the lemming-like influenced masses instead choosing to not gamble at all.

If gambling advertising is eradicated eventually, what’s next? No more incessant Dan Murphy’s ads in the half-time of Friday Night Football? Bunnings banished from advertising chainsaws in newspaper liftouts due to the manifest problems a chainsaw can cause if held in the wrong hands.

Academic research in this area will tell you – and these are my words – that there’s the purest form of idiocy that underpins any decision to play poker machines. Almost three-quarters of problem gamblers are in fact problem pokie players. Of the total cohort of problem gamblers in this country, only a small fraction have a specific issue with sports betting. Lotto is more of a problem.

Borrowing from the songwriter Tim Freedman, the pokies should all be exploded. There’s no more miserable sight than walking through an RSL club at 10am and observing scores of people hypnotically spinning their money into oblivion. Yet as much as regulators turn the thumbscrews on masking their existence, the pokies won’t disappear.

What’s missing is education about the mathematical impossibilities of winning on a poker machine. If the intent is to eradicate the risks associated with gambling addiction, where’s the education in schools and elsewhere, about the abject evils of sophisticated electronic devices that are rigged to pay back less than 90 per cent of the money injected? Why don’t schools teach a sub-curriculum in gambling to equip people to make their own choices?

There is a thing in life that governments forget about, which is vital: personal responsibility and free choice. These are dangerous times, if it’s thought fit that 99 per cent of unaffected people should be materially and adversely affected by driving sports betting underground to protect the other 1 per cent of “problem gamblers” from themselves. That’s especially correct when only a small proportion of “problem gamblers” actually have a “problem” with sports gambling.

Moreover, why would the absence of advertising make the problem go away at all? It’s so reported this week that some nefarious organisation that branded itself The Commission allegedly shipped a tonne and a half of cocaine around NSW just in the past few months. All without any advertising.

You reckon problem gamblers are likely to just disappear, if Caine disappears from our TV screens? It’s the rationale of the same Chicken Littles who were rambling around four years ago, begging authorities to lock down whole cities. And how’d that work out?

I agree with Racing NSW CEO Peter V’Landys without reservation or hesitation; the government’s musings about outlawing the promotion of sports betting companies is nanny-statism writ large.

Any push by the federal government to ban or severely constrict gambling advertising is the construct of ideologues who believe they know best and who also think that they are best placed to decide what’s best for others.

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