Gambling is popular in Australia, and with it, there have been a lot of calls for restricting the reach of the activity. Yet, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said that there are no immediate plans to roll out new restrictions on gambling ads, least of all a blanket ban.
Australia Far from Enacting a Complete Gambling Ads Ban
The reason for this is simple: do so, and you risk empowering the black market in the process. Albanese also quipped at his critics, arguing that the government did not come up with its policy “on the run” and that demanding immediate action without proper time to study the implications would not do.
Albanese doubled down on some of the measures that have already been rolled out, arguing that BetStop, the national self-exclusion program, has been giving results, but these surmises could be wrong, as BetStop only prevents people from gambling locally and with licensed and law-abiding operators.
Multiple surveys from the United States and Europe have indicated that offshore operators hold anything between 30% and 70% of the gambling market total. Therefore, relying on a national self-exclusion registry to effectively curb problem gambling is not serious, and is a wide breadth from the established best practices.
However, he doubled down that there are specific sources of gambling harm in the country, singling out poker machines as the biggest contributor to this trend, and added that this was what the country would be focusing on.
Do Not Alienate Players, Pushing Them to Offshore Markets
He acknowledged, though, that the government should act in such a way as to ensure that players remain in the regulated market, and are not cut off from it, or spirited away to the offshore market instead.
Gambling ads have been linked to gambling harm in several major jurisdictions around the world, but few have enacted a complete ban, citing similar fears. Italy and the Netherlands have imposed some of the tightest controls on the market.