Gambling means Australians are the biggest losers in the world

Australians also lose more to gambling than anyone else in the world – $32 billion in 2023-24, which is more than the $21 billion lost in all the casinos in Las Vegas put together.

And the problem is only getting worse.

Since 2019, average losses to gambling in Australia have increased by 25%, and the average Aussie gambler now losses about $2500 a year.

That’s more than the average home pays for a year’s worth of electricity. Slightly older data (from 2017) puts Australia’s losses ahead of second-placed Hong Kong ($1200), and third-placed Singapore ($1,133). Las Vegas ranks ninth, with a relatively modest $658 lost a year.

Australia clearly has a gambling problem. And the proliferation of gambling apps and sports betting means that gambling has come to infiltrate our sporting codes, living rooms, and free time in ways that weren’t possible as little as 10 years ago.

In 2023, a Federal Government committee released a major report into the harms of online gambling, commonly known as The Murphy Review, after the late chair of the committee, Peta Murphy. But, despite the fact that Murphy was a member of the Albanese Government, and even though the Labor Party has been in government for more than two years since the release of the report, none of its recommendations have been implemented. Although Labor floated the idea of a ban on advertising in August 2024, it was never introduced.

The reforms proposed by the Murphy Review are modest and include 31 ways to better regulate gambling in Australia. This includes a ban on all forms of advertising for online gambling, and Australia Institute polling research shows widespread support for this kind of initiative. Three in four Australians (76%) support a total ban on gambling ads phased in over three years, and four in five support banning gambling ads on social media and online (81%) and in stadiums and on players’ uniforms (79%). And this support has been sustained over years. When The Australia Institute conducted a similar poll in 2022, seven in 10 Australians (71%) agreed that gambling ads on TV should be banned.

The Murphy Review also calls for a single Australian Government Minister to be made responsible for online gambling, and for an online gambling ombudsman to be established. This is because, as it stands, the Commonwealth does not have oversight over the companies that have flooded our screens with betting ads. Instead, in an arrangement that allows online bettering companies to pay less tax, Australia’s de-facto online gambling regulator is the Northern Territory Racing Commission.

Political donations from the gambling industry are common. A 2021 ABC investigation found that gambling-related donors made more than $80 million in political payments between 1998 and 2020. Several stories in the media raise serious questions about the money accepted by Commonwealth politicians involved in considering the recommendations of the Murphy Review. This included free tickets to sporting matches given to both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, a $9000 dinner for the woman who went on to become Australia’s attorney general, and a claim that the Prime Minister pulled proposed reforms to avoid a stoush with the major sporting codes, who get a cut from sports betting worth millions of dollars.

The Murphy Report achieved a rare consensus in Australian politics: ambitious reforms taking on vested interests that were backed by every parliamentarian on the committee, Labor, Liberal and independent alike. The Albanese Government knows what the answers are – all it needs to do is implement the recommendations of a unanimously-supported review led by a respected Labor MP.

Without reform, Australian will continue to be the world’s biggest losers.