Page 1513 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 1 June 2022
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2019. The BOT is a 15 per cent point-of-consumption tax payable by all betting operators in the ACT, and betting operators across the country are responsible for determining where bets have been placed in Australia.
This is a great start, but we need to do more to minimise harm from online gambling. We need to start to focus on understanding what the ACT market looks like. In recent decades we have seen a strong policy approach to addressing the harm caused by the tobacco industry—heavy taxing of the industry, a ban on advertising, and community preventative health messages and campaigns. We can do the same for gambling; indeed, we must. We need to treat gambling habits in much the same way as we have treated tobacco smoking. They have many similarities, including health impacts, whether these be physical or mental. Of course, the financial toll of gambling losses is heart-wrenching. Families’ homes are lost and futures are lost.
Dr Paterson calls on the ACT government to address the harm caused by online gambling, for the benefit of our community. She calls on the ACT government to continue to work with the commonwealth, state and territory governments on the implementation of the national consumer protection framework for online wagering. This is a framework which provides stronger consumer protections from online gambling. It is a nationally consistent approach that was established in 2018 in response to government concerns that online gambling is three times higher than other types of gambling. The framework consists of 10 measures to empower individuals and to minimise harm, including prohibiting lines of credit, customer verification, restrictions on inducements, a voluntary opt-out pre-commitment scheme, consistent gambling messaging and a national self-exclusion register.
Further, Dr Paterson calls on the ACT government to conduct a review of what we know of online gambling in the ACT; what we know of the online gambling market advertising that ACT residents are exposed to; and what we know about the harm that stems from this. We know enough to know that the online gambling industry in the ACT is alive and well—too well! We do not know enough to be able to form clear policies and actions to address it. So, in this motion, Dr Paterson calls on the ACT government to investigate revenue sources that can be used for harm minimisation activities for the ACT community that target online gambling. I have already mentioned, the ACT government’s betting operation tax. Dr Paterson would like to investigate whether we need to increase this tax and use the proceeds for harm minimisation activities and whether there are other opportunities. These are the types of things that Dr Paterson wants the ACT government to explore: are there ways that the industry itself can start to ameliorate the harm it causes?
Finally, Dr Paterson is calling on the ACT government to consider ways to raise community awareness about the risks of online gambling, and to target particularly those groups in our community that are most targeted. By taking these steps, we will be on our way to devising and implementing a plan to address and mitigate the harm caused by online gambling. Dr Paterson calls on colleagues in this Assembly today to support this motion and, in doing so, to support our community. I commend the motion to you on her behalf. I am very happy to present her words today for you, here.
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