Page 1515 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 1 June 2022
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Given the nature of the industry, there are challenges for the ACT in regulating certain aspects of the industry. As I touched on earlier, the commonwealth has responsibility for regulating the provision of telecommunications in Australia, including television and internet advertising of online wagering products. As regulation of TV advertising is undertaken through the commercial television industry code of practice, the ACT is somewhat limited in the measures we can introduce to address the issue of TV advertising. The code does have rules for gambling advertising during live sporting events and during children’s programs or times when children may be watching television.
However, I do believe that more can be done in this space. As I have said publicly on a number of occasions, I find the trend in advertising, particularly from the sports betting companies, particularly distasteful and I think particularly dangerous in the way that they target young men in Australia. These ads that run products such as “bet with mates” carry an implicit message that this is what you should do together, that to be cool, to be in with your mates, you should join a betting group with them and you should participate in it on a regular basis. I think this sort of peer pressure that is built into this advertising approach is distasteful at best. There are a number of other ways I could describe it that would probably fit into the unparliamentary category, so I will move along.
This is an issue that I will be raising with the incoming federal minister. Ministers have just been sworn in today. I intend to write to a range of ministers in my portfolio areas in the coming days raising issues that they need to contemplate and that we would like to work with them on as they come into office. In this context, this is something that has been raised with me by various members of the community, including the Community Clubs Ministerial Advisory Council which, as members will know, brings together the government, industry, unions and gambling harm reduction advocates to talk about a range of issues, particularly in the context of clubs in the ACT.
People have said to me, “How are you dealing with these pokies when online gambling is such a problem?” My response to that has been very clear: we have to deal with all of these issues. This is not an either/or situation. For too long, in my view, we have not taken the strong measures that we should on poker machines. But at the same time we also need to address online gaming issues. This is a space where we need to work together to try and address some of these things.
I will briefly outline a number of measures that are already in place in the ACT to respond to gambling concerns. In doing so, I acknowledge that there is more work to be done, as is noted in the parliamentary agreement and through other various fora. The ACT government has implemented a number of strategies to address the harms and risks associated with gambling.
The Gambling and Racing Control (Code of Practice) Regulation 2002 is mandatory for all licensees and is the key mechanism to reduce the risks and harms associated with gambling in the ACT. The harm minimisation framework in the code includes a range of harm reduction strategies. The code requires a licensee to allow for deposit
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