ACT considers ban on political donations from gambling industry

The ACT currently bans donations from property developers and foreign entities, but it could soon join NSW as one of the only jurisdictions that bans donations from the gambling industry.

Independent MLA Thomas Emerson introduced the Electoral (Gambling Industry) Amendment Bill 2026 in June, which would ban donations from entities connected to the gambling industry. His proposal comes amid an ongoing ACT Government push to reduce gambling harm within the Territory.

On the national scale, Australia Institute research has found that, on a per-person basis, Australians lose more money to gambling than those from any other country. Between March 2025 and March 2026, Australians lost $36 billion to gambling. Since the Murphy review was tabled in 2023, gamblers have lost over $111 billion – and counting.

In the ACT, one in six people experience gambling-related harm, with young men disproportionately affected. The 2024 ACT gambling survey highlighted “the importance of integrated public health approaches” to manage the harms caused by gambling, and the ACT Legislative Assembly’s inquiry into men’s suicide similarly recognised the importance of broad public health measures and restrictions on the industry.

What can be done about it?

The ACT Legislative Assembly is currently conducting an inquiry into Emerson’s bill, and you can read the Australia Institute’s submission here.

Currently, donations from the gambling industry are allowed, and in the 2025–26 financial year, both the ACT Labor and Liberal parties received gifts from bodies connected to the gambling industry.

They aren’t alone: in 2022, the ABC reported that “Organisations and individuals linked to the gambling industry have poured at least $18 million in political donations into the states and territories in recent years”. What’s more, analysis by the Foundation for Alcohol Research & Education found that donations increased around election periods and policy discussions.

That might suggest that there are political motivations behind some of the industry’s donations. Gambling companies are particularly dependent on government regulation (or lack thereof) and have a special interest in influencing government decision-making.

Conventional tools for addressing political finance concerns – such as public funding, donation caps and spending caps – are blunt instruments that have so far failed to rein in vested interests or address cash-for-access.

It makes sense to distinguish political contributions by donor and purpose, not just by size, through targeted political finance limitations, and The Australia Institute argues that the gambling industry has the kind of outsized exposure that would justify subjecting it to a specific ban.

And taking action on this issue would seemingly be very popular. Polling by The Australia Institute over the last five years suggests that Australians are generally supportive of targeted bans on industries with vested interests.

In 2021, Australia Institute polling research found that most Tasmanians (73%) would support a ban on political donations by the gambling industry. Polling in 2024 found that over half of Tasmanians (57%) supported or strongly supported banning political donations from the gambling, salmon farming and property development industries.

In 2023, national polling research by The Australia Institute found that three in four Australians (74%) supported banning political donations from organisations that receive funding from government contracts.

The gambling industry makes political contributions to political entities across Australia and within the ACT, and at the same time does significant harm to Canberrans.

A ban on political donations from the gambling industry is a proportionate and targeted response to a major problem: that political contributions may influence how strictly a harmful industry is regulated.