Tuesday, 17 October 2023

Gambling harm

Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (16:28): It is Gambling Harm Awareness Week, and the latest data released by Monash Uni confirms that yet again communities continue to be decimated by this rapacious gambling industry. In Victoria losses over the last year are 12 per cent higher than 2018–19, which was the last financial year not to be impacted by COVID restrictions. Poker machines drained over $3 billion in that financial year from families, from people and from our communities, and that reporting excludes poker machine losses at the casino, so the true figures are even higher. How have we allowed this to become so normalised?

Australia has less than 0.5 per cent of the world’s population, but we have 20 per cent of the world’s poker machines, and 80 per cent of those machines are located outside the casino in our communities. A recent landmark study of Victoria’s Coroners Court data showed that gambling addiction contributed to 184 suicides over eight years. It was mostly men aged 17 to 44. The rate is likely higher than this as gambling is not routinely investigated by coroners, and more recent research published in January showed that 40 per cent of Australian veterans with gambling addictions have thought about ending their lives, while one in five has attempted to kill themselves.

We welcome the casino reforms put in place. We welcome the first steps of poker machine reform the government has introduced in the other place and look forward to working with the minister on the next larger steps of gambling reform.