The state government is being urged to fast-track pokies carded play, used at Crown Casino, to all of Victoria’s poker machine venues.<\/p>\n
High risk gambling was associated with a higher prevalence of cognitive, behavioural and mental health conditions, as well as higher rates of intimate partner violence and financial hardship.<\/p>\n
“People start gambling for the thrill of the gamble \u2014 for the fact they make their life different,” Dr Tillman said.<\/p>\n
“So it starts turning into a behavioural addiction paradigm, or a genuine way to make money.”<\/p>\n
Young gamblers at risk<\/p>\n
Young people, aged 18 to 24, were nearly twice as likely to be at high risk of harm, compared to other age groups.<\/p>\n
Dr Tillman said gambling advertising targeted towards young people increased the risk of harm.<\/p>\n
“It’s kind of a repetitive message we keep finding, we go into the data, and we look at age groups and the young group is at high risk.”<\/p>\n
Lived experience advocate and former gambler Shayne Rodgers grew up with gambling as part of his life.<\/p>\n
“Gambling was discussed daily in my household,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We were part of horse racing syndicates, TattsLotto. [It] kind of started at an early age.”<\/p>\n
At just 18, the Taungurung man realised his betting was becoming a problem.<\/p>\n
He realised he needed to get help when he was in his late 20s and found it was affecting his day-to-day life, such as being unable to afford fuel for his car.<\/p>\n
Shayne Rodgers has not gambled for more than a decade, but he said he now worries about his son’s exposure to gambling.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Australians lose $32 billion on legal forms of gambling each year. (\u00a0Four Corners: Jerry Rickard)<\/p>\n
He said Australia needed to do more to regulate gambling, including limiting online gambling ads.<\/p>\n
“We go on football apps and things like that and the first thing that they see when they try and watch a replay of the game is gambling ads,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We’re impacting our children, who have no idea about gambling, especially at my son’s age. They’re getting conditioned.”<\/p>\n
The report found Queensland reported the highest prevalence of gambling, at 70.2 per cent, followed by Western Australia at 69.6 per cent, and South Australia at 67.9 per cent.<\/p>\n
Respondents in New South Wales reported a lower rate, at 63.9 per cent.<\/p>\n
While Victoria and Tasmania had the lowest prevalence, at 60 per cent and 59.9 per cent, respectively.<\/p>\n
The study did not include data on the Northern Territory or the ACT.<\/p>\n
Gambling regulation failure<\/p>\n
Alliance for Gambling Reform chief advocate Tim Costello said Australia has failed to protect children and young people from gambling harm.<\/p>\n
“This is literally a social pandemic and a social holocaust happening on our watch,” he said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
One advocate says the federal government has not implemented any of the recommendations of the 2023 Murphy Report. (ABC News: Patrick Thomas)<\/p>\n
Mr Costello said the federal government has not implemented any of the recommendations of the landmark 2023 Murphy Report into gambling harm, which included recommendations for a national gambling regulator and a ban on online gambling ads.<\/p>\n
Australians lose $32 billion on legal forms of gambling each year, more per capita than anywhere in the world.<\/p>\n
In a statement, a government spokesperson said the Albanese government had undertaken significant gambling harm reduction measures, including launching the self-exclusion register BetStop.<\/p>\n
The statement said the government had also established mandatory ID checks for online bets, banning the use of credit cards for online betting and introducing tag lines for gambling advertisements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New data on gambling in Australia reveals that around 3 million people are engaged in some form of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[105784,15363,5368,105785,77851,97,259,260,6208,5497],"class_list":{"0":"post-177988","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-australian-gambling-research-centre","9":"tag-gambling","10":"tag-gambling-addiction","11":"tag-gambling-harm","12":"tag-harm","13":"tag-health","14":"tag-mental-health","15":"tag-mentalhealth","16":"tag-risk","17":"tag-study"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}