Gambling advertising is grooming our children – ban it

When the Canberra Raiders take to the field this weekend against the Cowboys, children in the crowd will see the Green Machine celebrating a try with Palmerbet in a prominent position on their jerseys.

Many other NRL teams also advertise gambling companies on their uniforms, as do the AFL sides and others.

This is grooming: subliminally preparing young people to gamble. It doesn’t mention, on the uniforms, that you basically always lose.

The jerseys sold to supporters also have advertising for gambling. Young supporters are walking around as advertising billboards for gambling.

Gambling has been around forever and will continue to be. Any government that tries to stop gambling will be met with laughter as people will always find a way to take a punt on something.

Many people do enjoy having a bet and do so in a healthy way.

Back in the 1960s, governments recognised that they couldn’t stop the illegal ‘SP bookies’, who often based themselves in pubs and made a lot of money from horse racing.

Eventually, the TAB was created as a legal way for people to enjoy the races while betting, which also meant governments could take a share.

There were also no casinos in Australia for a long time, but there were plenty of illegal casinos that the government couldn’t seem to close down.

Now most cities have legal casinos, which still need to be policed closely due to money laundering and general shenanigans.

Then we come to the ubiquitous poker machines. These were introduced into registered clubs in NSW in 1956.

Then, as governments needed more money, pokies became more prevalent until, in most states, you will find them all over the major cities and towns, in pubs and generally everywhere (except in WA).

Australia has less than 1 per cent of the world’s population and 20 per cent of the world’s poker machines. Not good.

We know most people do gamble responsibly, but we also know there is a gambling problem impacting too many people.

We, as a nation, gamble away $25 billion a year.

The increased access to online betting means we can now legally bet on any sport, on elections and sometimes on what UFOs are up to.

So, Australians love a punt, but that shouldn’t mean it’s a free-for-all.

How is the ACT going?

Perhaps it was an accident of politics, but we resisted having a casino for a long time, and the way the city is designed, it didn’t lend itself to having a lot of traditional pubs.

We ended up with the community-based clubs being the main location for poker machines.

The profit from those machines was then used to support sports teams and facilities, give to charities and generally provide community funding.

Poker machines also funded the Labor Party and the CFMEU.

The Greens have previously taken funds from the CFMEU, so they should refuse to do that again or recuse themselves.

Eventually, a casino turned up and has always wanted access to pokies. If the casino ever gets access to the pokies, then any profit would be siphoned out of Canberra and sent off to other countries and communities, not our own.

So, keep pokies out of the Canberra Casino.

Now we see, in an election year, promises being made to decrease the number of poker machines. Good and excellent.

But, when elections loom and parties panic, we can assume this has not been properly thought through.

This good news for problem gamblers also means that the government will need to find funds for future maintenance of ovals and sports facilities. Maybe we need a plan, jointly developed by industry and government, about a sustainable future for community clubs while the change occurs.

(It should also not be forgotten that gamblers will travel over the border to gamble.)

If the pokies can be tamed, we need to increase the focus on advertising online gambling.

We cannot stop advertising from electronic sources and websites outside the ACT, but we should ban gambling advertising where we can.

For a start, ban the placement of advertising on sports uniforms.

An effort is being made by the non-political community clubs to better manage problem gamblers.

Maybe we could have an independent gambling commissioner oversee the process for a short period.

We can also learn from the decades-long journey tobacco took from being prominent and sponsoring big sports events to an eventual total ban on advertising and then later the placing of graphic images on packaging to highlight the awful outcomes of smoking.

Instead of gambling going through the same process, how about we move straight to banning advertising of any gambling?

In locations such as casinos, we could have graphic images of people with wrecked relationships, in poverty and profoundly unhappy.

Peter Strong was a Canberra business owner and CEO of the Council of Small Business Australia (COSBOA) for 11 years. He has announced his candidacy as an independent in the 2024 ACT election.