Yes. Basically it means that on average you have a 100% chance of losing 10%.
As you say, if you keep losing 10%, you will eventually have nothing - and that is absolutely fine if it is money that you can afford to lose i.e. if it is just âentertainment moneyâ.
Which states have banned what exactly?
I donât think a state should ban pokies. However a state might contemplate a licence buyback in order to reduce the availability - and that could be a step towards a ban in the future.
Naturally a state would look at that and see expenditure (one-off) increasing while at the same time as causing revenue (permanently) to decrease - and hence not like that idea.
In addition, a state would see the likelihood of gambling moving online - where the same problems of a small number of problem gamblers will exist but without the revenue benefits to the states and to the community. (Even if the Feds somehow managed to tax that, there is no guarantee, as with the GST, that the proceeds will come back to the states at all, or equitably.)
The most innocuous change might be to reduce the maximum allowed stake. You would still eventually end up with $0 but it would take you longer to get there. So your entertainment cost in $/hr is lower.
If you had read the linked article you would see that Tasmania has none. {edit: this is wrong, Tassies does}
I agree that other measures can be taken. For example reduce the very high house margin from 13% or reduce the maximum stake per roll, which varies but last time I looked it was $10 per press in NSW. Make it $1 or 50c and you have to work much harder to put the rent through on payday. Or just reduce the numbers of machines. Or implement the card only access with pre-set limits recommended by studies into problem gambling. There are many options.
You forgot about taxes. If there were no taxes, your statement would be correct. Most states have a 10-15% tax on gross gambling revenue, so the odds fall to around 70%. Then there is GST. All of a sudden it becomes around 60%.
This means if you are a gambler meeting the odds, for every dollar you spend, the maximum you will get back is around 60 cents in the dollarâŠor as a retired bookie who is a friend says, you have better chance of keeping some of your money if you walked down the street throwing away half you have.
That is not correct. What might typically happen is that 87% of all amounts bet are returned in prizes. The remaining 13% is shared between GST, state Government tax and the operator.
Gross gambling revenue, the basis for the tax amounts, is the amount bet less the amount paid out in prizes.
I have no idea about what taxes apply on the proceeds of gambling.
However you are mixing up your percentages. The house edge (up to 13%) is the margin on every transaction not on the net balance at the end. Taxes are levied on the latter, so the two kinds of percentage are neither comparable nor additive.
It possibly should be taxed higher as a disincentive to gamble.
If one believes that they might win 80-90% (more or less) of their punts over the long term, they have ârocks in oneâs headâ. I have just read the Qld government website which seems to give a (glowing) indication that this is the caseâŠhardly for the average punter.
Also note that in order for a state to have banned pokies in the sense that would usefully apply to e.g. NSW then it would have to have had pokies in the first place.
If Western Australia has âresisted the scourgeâ of ever introducing pokies (even if that might be bending the truth) then that experience is quite different from states that already have them.
That is problematic for me because of the implied extension of the surveillance state. If you can do it in a way that does not impact on privacy (except for those who want to be surveilled) then go for it. There would, I suppose, be a subset of problem gamblers who know that they have a problem and want to do something about it, who would therefore be willing to be surveilled.
They already exist and complain that the existing voluntary exclusion system doesnât work.
By your definition it may be so. By my dictionary and common usage the verb âto banâ means to interdict, proscribe, prohibit a thing. There is no indication that banning in prospect, where the problem does not yet exist, is not permitted.
Totally. The emphasis was on âusefully applyâ. Sure, there may be states (not in Australia apparently but hypothetically letâs say) that have never had pokies because it has never been legal. That stateâs journey is therefore completely different and hence in terms of
why is it that some States can ban it and others not?
it doesnât inform state government policy much now or even provide a lead.
It is very difficult to get the toothpaste back in the tube after, in the case of NSW, almost 70 years.
Itâs a bit like asking a country that has never had a case of COVID to provide input to the Australian governmentâs policy for managing COVID.
âVoluntaryâ exclusion from the club itself should work without extending the surveillance state - but that has three limitations.
Not all pokies are in clubs. Many are in hotels. Some are in casinos.
That is not in the interests of the club. The club still wants the patron eating and drinking, even if not gambling. So it would require the gambling area to have a physical barrier to entrance and an additional membership check at the point of entry - which would impose a range of costs on the club. For the large mega-business-clubs in Sydney, that could be completely viable. For many smaller clubs it could be unviable.
Not all clubs necessarily enforce the entry rules properly anyway (as discussed previously, but maybe that just needs to be fixed).
The point of no return.
The NSW beginnings as explained by the SMH in 1962.
No surprise for those who read the linked article whether any of the issues raised, including prohibition of problem gamblers are any different!
For the politically inquisitive NSW at the time was a labour led state. When the other team finally came into government there was an opportunity to undo some of the damage. Enough said about political will when where we are today is considered.
A whole slew of gambling and gambling ad complaints have been made during 2022 but obviously not enough to get much done about enforcement or change in legislation.
Above are just some of the news articles about problems with gambling and about gambling ad complaints during 2022. While watching News at 6 pm it is not unusual to be bombarded with consecutive ads about gambling eg SportsBet (even they called for Credit Cards to be banned when used for gamblingâŠhmmm maybe chargeback provisions hurting them??) The 2018 legislation that sought to ban these ads during live coverage is circumvented when shown during any other show, not that it is that effective during live events as can be seen from the Channel 7 finding in the third article listed.
When is ACMA going to get serious about banning ads (they say they want the legislative change, but it hasnât happened yet), when are Governments going to get serious about these ads and halting their ever-increasing promotion? I guess Governments donât really want to change as the money derived from Gambling business is just too much cash to give up just like a junkie hooked on heroin or methamphetamine (you know the instant addiction type). They may pay lip service but underneath they just arenât ready to go through rehab. As ACMA is a government body, it must be difficult to get results, as it requires the addict (Government) to first acknowledge they have a problem and then get serious about withdrawal from the addiction to gambling.
The article you have linked states that 208 inquiries or complaints we lodged in the 2021-22 financial year. This equated to roughly one contact from every 100,000 adults. The number of 208 may include contacts that were not complaints e.g. asking what the current regulations are, and multiple complaints from the same person. Is this number high enough to be called a slew?
Those wishing to have further limits or a ban placed on the advertising need to concentrate on data relating specifically to online gambling. It is irrelevant to include data about casino, lottery and poker machine losses when considering the pros and cons of Sportsbet etc.
Whilst online gambling does cause harm to a small percentage of the population, so do many other activities when they are overdone e.g. junk foods and shopping for wants rather than needs. These problems seem to fly under the radar because a larger percentage of the population finds the activities desirable. Does online gambling cause more or less overall harm than some of these other things?
I consider junk food ads to be more of a problem than those for gambling, given that adults in a household are more likely to embrace the former and criticise the latter.
The complaints I am referring to are not just the ACMA ones. Though in the case of ACMA complaints, they nearly doubled the number from those in 2021 to those in 2022 (edited my post to indicate it was almost double and as pointed out by @Glenn61, the difference was a 73% increase over the 2020/2021 year). Complaints are not just about online gambling, they include pokies and other forms. I have not included any of the complaints aired in the Crown and Star reviews/Royal Commisssions, which included money laundering, organised crime links and fraud for Star and for âCrown had facilitated money laundering, failed to investigate suspicions of money laundering, permitted junkets with links to criminals to operate at the casino and failed to minimise gambling-related harm caused by electronic gaming machinesâ. Tobacco advertising was banned, the number of people using tobacco has fallen year on year due to the taxing of products and the removal of ads about products. I hope the same comes about for gambling. In regards to other addictions and their social impact, there is no harm in raising a topic about each here by those who feel strongly about reducing their harms.
Regarding gambling there are a lot of reports/articles that have been publicised in 2022. Maybe the number may rise in 2023, hopefully they do rise to swamp the apathy to gambling ads that has been happening. Australia has a problem with its addiction to gambling and the ads are not helping.
Australia is home to less than half a percent of the worldâs population but has 20 percent of its pokies â and 80 percent of those located outside casinos. The result is a nation with the worldâs worst average gambling losses: About $1,000 per adult each year. Opponents of gambling say pokies fuel suicides, domestic violence, insolvencies and financial crimes.
âIf you look at comparable countries around the world,â said Charles Livingstone, an associate professor of public health at Monash University, âwe are far and away the worst in terms of both expenditure and its impact on the community.â
The Washington Post typically reports in US dollars. Our adult population is approx 20 millions. IE Tens of billions lost every year. A more serious observation is that we are not all gamblers. How many dollars must some be loosing, far more than any of us could afford, for the average loss to be what it is?
I do not follow the logic here that one would only put effort into dealing with a problem if it is bigger than other problems. It isnât as though there is only a fixed amount of effort available and it must be prioritised. I would rather try to deal with the problems of our society as they arise and independently. In time e-gambling could become as big or bigger than the other kinds, should we wait until then before acting?
It doesnât matter very much how often there are complaints, what matters is how much harm is done or will be done if more unconstrained gambling opportunities are provided.
Online and more traditional mechanisms do have things in common. The problem with pokies and other gambling requiring physical presence is that they have become normalised and children grow up in houses where it is done all the time. If you donât want e-gambling to become so widespread it would be better to deal with it before it becomes entrenched or you will have the same problem we have with the traditional formats.
Why should our boys be indoctrinated into accepting any kind of gambling is normal, desirable, fun, manly and harmless? We have taken action against advertising addictions like smoking and drinking, why does any format of gambling get a free pass?
The article states the amount increased by 73.33%,from 120 to 208.
The increased knowledge about the adverse health effects would also be a major contributor to the decline in the number of smokers. Also the fact that 14.7% of Australian adults smoke indicates that these measures might not have been effective as some would like to think.
This percentage is widely quoted and the actual issue is distorted by the names used to describe gambling machines. Other reports state that Australia is the home of 2.59% of the worldâs gaming machines. The truth is likely to lie somewhere between these two figures.
I agree with this point. The reason why I listed the other ways to waste money is that personal bias precludes a lot of people from identifying all problems that exist. For example in the same parent or parents might:
Criticise one of their children for losing $100 whilst gambling.
Be excited that another child enjoyed a show, after spending $300 on the ticket.
Tell another child how good they look after spending $1,000 on Afterpay getting their hair done, fake nails and some new clothes.
Happily feed the family junk food from the nearby chew ânâ spew drive thru on multiple occasions in a given week.
Which, if any of the above, someone sees as problems is likely to be influenced by their biases.
If someone want to se the word âslewâ to quantify an issue, they should only do so if the number of occurrences justifies the usage i.e. the number is large.
Possibly because it is normal, fun and harmless for a large percentage of the population.
There are many restriction applicable to gambling advertising. As I have not suggested that any of these be removed, I am not implying that the advertisers be given a free pass.
I donât think the number of complaints is a relevant metric. People may simply be more motivated to complain or even there could be an organised campaign of complaints. The relevant metric is surely âharmâ, either in a relative sense or an absolute sense?
I donât speak for them obviously but possibly even they realise that you should only gamble with money that is yours, not money that is effectively borrowed (or stolen).
I understand your cynicism but I think you need to follow the money in more detail i.e. to work out which government really benefits from gambling and how.
If you are talking about state governments and pokies then for sure there is a money trail. If a state government were going to wind up the pokie industry in that state in a fair and orderly manner then it would indeed cost the state a lot of money. Would the cost outweigh the benefit? Who knows.
Well there kinda is. There is a limited number of sitting days for passing bad legislation. Every public servant who is involved in drafting laws only has a limited number of working hours. Every politician only has a limited number of hours for persuading the public that the proposed legislation is a good thing.
On the enforcement side, in practical terms, there are only so many taxpayer dollars that are going to pay public servants to monitor, surveil, investigate, enforce, âŠ
Except that the problem with established onshore in-person gambling (pokies, casinos, races etc) is a State matter and advertising and e-gambling is federal.
