Gambling Legistlation in Australia

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Gambling Legistlation in Australia

Postby bennymacca » Fri Jan 17, 2014 12:21 pm

There didnt really seem to be a dedicated thread on this, which is surprising, so i thought i would start one, based on this article. I am going to discuss three issues here, maybe i should start threads for all of them, see what the interest is.

http://www.theglobalmail.org/feature/cr ... tures/805/

41% of all pokie revenue in australia comes from problem gambling, and people on average spend $3700 a year in the pokies.

read that again. $3700 a year!!!

personally, that is a shocking amount to me.


also on a personal note, i have always been a little bit torn on the issue of pokies. Even though i am left leaning as you guys may have noticed, i am definitely for personal freedoms, but i believe it is the governments role to provide appropriate mechanisms in place to help problem gamblers. pre-committment legislation, provided the customer could choose to up that limit as high as he wanted (which was the original legistlation allowed for) would have been a good outcome i think.

the fact that the labor government couldnt get the pre-committment legislation through the parliament was a massive failure in my eyes. I also believe they have proliferated too much - to have them in what i would say is the vast majority of pubs in australia (WA notwithstanding) is pretty crazy when you think about it.

I would be much happier if they were kept to casinos only - means that if people still want to play they can, but it is not in their face all the time. Unfortunately the genie is out of the bottle in most states in australia, so i think having a pre-committment for the high limit machines is a good idea. it was never the 1c machines that were the issue.


part of reason why i am torn on this issue is that i play a LOT of online poker, which currently sits in a legal grey area where it is illegal for any australian based operator to offer online gambling (and poker is lumped in with this), but they have ruled in the past that they dont have the jurisdiction to stop offshore sites from offering games to australians, and that a player playing these games is not illegal.

i also personally see a distinction between poker and other forms of online gambling, because poker is a skill game with a significant luck element, rather than other games where you literally never have a shot at winning in the long term.

i would perfer to see online poker separated out from the other forms of gambling, and become regulated in Australia, similar to the way sports betting is regulated.


third topic - sports betting - i like the way it is regulated, and i think that is the way forward for online poker as i mentioned above, but i think the law should be changed as to when they can advertised. things like gambling and alcohol are supposed to be enjoyed by people over 18, so i think restricting the advertising of such products to after 830, i.e when adult movies etc are allowed to be shown would be a good idea. how you solve the issue of billboards at the games etc im not sure, but im sure they have much less of an impact than samuel L jackson or tom waterhouse being on the tv every 4 seconds.
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Re: Gambling Legistlation in Australia

Postby Psyber » Sat Jan 18, 2014 10:09 am

The two big issues in problem gambling seem to me to be very easy access - you can now do it impulsively on your phone and don't have to go sustain a longer motivation to go to a club premises before you can lose your money - and the promotion that suggests gambling is a normal healthy thing to do and you are likely to do something other than lose your money over the long term. (I don't know anyone socially who gambles regularly.)
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Re: Gambling Legistlation in Australia

Postby bennymacca » Sat Jan 18, 2014 11:06 am

to me, it doesnt get much easier in terms of access than walking down to your local pub. or you can already sports bet on your phone. so genie is out of hte bottle in that regard. so regulation and monitoring is the best way to handle it imo.

and gambling is a healthy and normal thing to do - it is a form of recreation that many people enjoy within their means. similar to drinking alcohol. we dont ban alcohol in the home because of the potential it has for harm, and we shouldnt do it for gambling either. but as i said, it needs to be regulated and protected from underage etc
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Re: Gambling Legistlation in Australia

Postby Psyber » Sat Jan 18, 2014 4:44 pm

bennymacca wrote:to me, it doesnt get much easier in terms of access than walking down to your local pub. or you can already sports bet on your phone. so genie is out of hte bottle in that regard. so regulation and monitoring is the best way to handle it imo.

and gambling is a healthy and normal thing to do - it is a form of recreation that many people enjoy within their means. similar to drinking alcohol. we dont ban alcohol in the home because of the potential it has for harm, and we shouldnt do it for gambling either. but as i said, it needs to be regulated and protected from underage etc

Here is a fairly reasonable summary of the situation and issues: http://www.psychology.org.au/publicatio ... /gambling/
And here is the federal government position: http://www.problemgambling.gov.au/facts/

The latter one is interesting as it says 70% of Australians gamble, and I don't know of anyone in my circle of friends who gambles beyond an occasional flutter on the Melbourne Cup. However, I do know my father regularly played the horses and was a phone runner for his SP bookie in the 1950s.
(He correlated the bets from the SA Railways employees at Islington workshops.)

I do remember a reading a study that suggested gambling, smoking, and drinking to excess, tend to go together, which may be so because none of my friends smoke or have ever been drunk to my knowledge. But I can't vouch for their distant past - after all I smoked a few cigarettes when I was about 10 and was mildly drunk one evening in 1975.
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Re: Gambling Legistlation in Australia

Postby bennymacca » Sat Jan 18, 2014 6:02 pm

well because i am relatively involved in the online poker community, i would say almost 100% of my friends have gambled at some point in time. Even if you discount poker as gambling, almost all of us have put at least some money on sports betting. almost all of the people i play in my country sports teams would gamble in some form too.

what is interseting is i can probably think of maybe two people that i know that could possibly be classified as a problem gambler, and one of them doesnt play poker and it is horses.

basically none of us play pokies either.

for some reason, and it probably is biased because of my background, but i treat sports betting and poker differently to casino games (which i also enjoy occasionally), but definitely different to poker machines. this might also be my prejudice but i feel like sports betting is different to horse betting .
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Re: Gambling Legistlation in Australia

Postby dedja » Sat Jan 18, 2014 6:57 pm

Pokies are an absolute scourge on society and should be heavily managed to protect the ever increasing chronic problem gamblers.

Unfortunately, the pokie lobby is extremely influential and state governments derive huge revenues from it so the chances of cracking down on problem gambling any time soon is remote.
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Re: Gambling Legistlation in Australia

Postby gadj1976 » Sun Jan 19, 2014 11:11 am

Psyber wrote:
bennymacca wrote:to me, it doesnt get much easier in terms of access than walking down to your local pub. or you can already sports bet on your phone. so genie is out of hte bottle in that regard. so regulation and monitoring is the best way to handle it imo.

and gambling is a healthy and normal thing to do - it is a form of recreation that many people enjoy within their means. similar to drinking alcohol. we dont ban alcohol in the home because of the potential it has for harm, and we shouldnt do it for gambling either. but as i said, it needs to be regulated and protected from underage etc

Here is a fairly reasonable summary of the situation and issues: http://www.psychology.org.au/publicatio ... /gambling/
And here is the federal government position: http://www.problemgambling.gov.au/facts/

The latter one is interesting as it says 70% of Australians gamble, and I don't know of anyone in my circle of friends who gambles beyond an occasional flutter on the Melbourne Cup. However, I do know my father regularly played the horses and was a phone runner for his SP bookie in the 1950s.
(He correlated the bets from the SA Railways employees at Islington workshops.)

I do remember a reading a study that suggested gambling, smoking, and drinking to excess, tend to go together, which may be so because none of my friends smoke or have ever been drunk to my knowledge. But I can't vouch for their distant past - after all I smoked a few cigarettes when I was about 10 and was mildly drunk one evening in 1975.


Psyber, that's interesting because if you have a go at Keno, buy meat tray tickets or go in sweeps for the Melbourne cup, you're essentially deemed as gambling that money. I think it'd be more widespread (and therefore a higher %) if people realised what gambling actually was.
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Re: Gambling Legistlation in Australia

Postby Psyber » Sun Jan 19, 2014 12:06 pm

So I count too as I've occasionally taken part in a Melbourne Cup sweep in my workplace just to be sociable.
(The clerical staff usually initiate and run them.)

But I've never had anything to do with Keno (and am not sure what it is) nor bought meat tray tickets as I don't cook.
I think some of my friends may have taken part in a Melbourne Cup sweep for the same reason I did.

I have bought the occasional raffle ticket for charity fund raisers.
I remember my wife bought 5 raffle tickets at a hospital fund raiser once and won all 5, some time in the early 1980s.
It looked a bit odd as they were drawn consecutively and her name kept being read out.
(She gave four prizes back to be re-raffled.)
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