In Australia pressure is mounting on the Labor government to stick to its principles and enforce a blanket ban on gambling advertising as the media reports that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his party favour watered-down measures. 

Viktor Kayed, Senior Business Journalist at SBC News, was joined by SBC’s Content Director, Ted Menmuir, to examine the latest developments in the story and why gambling advertising is such a divisive issue.

Ted starts by explaining that during the last Australian election Labor pledged to implement the 31 recommendations set out in the Murphy Report, which included a blanket ban. However, reports suggest that the government now wants to change this so that gambling ads are limited to two per hour. 

He added: “The reason why Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is in the crossfire is because gambling reforms formed the pledge of his government getting into power in 2022. The media criticism is that he has gone against his government’s recommendations and he’s caved in to media pressures of the networks who make a lot of money from gambling advertising.

“I believe that the real reasons are actually more nuanced than that and the Labor government is seeking to apply a more realistic and enforceable control than just an outright blanket ban that won’t impact as many stakeholders as an outright ban.”

The Australian gambling industry was previously governed on a state basis but steps have been made in recent years to bring gambling regulation under federal control. 

Similarly, broadcasters have both national and state programming which has contributed to the high number of gambling advertisements across the media networks as each broadcaster has its own code and standards for gambling.

Ted said: “It is a common consensus that gambling advertisers have flooded online and broadcast networks, especially around live sports programming. Independent market studies found during prime time hours in Australia you would get the audience bombarded with 300 adverts per hour across media networks.” 

To end the show, the pair discussed why the gambling reform is deemed to be necessary in Australia.

Viktor recalled stats from the Murphy report that stated that Australians outspend the citizens of every other country on online gambling. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare also reported that citizens lose approximately $25bn on legal forms of gambling each year, the largest per capita losses in the world. 

“If there were any questions about why such measures are being implemented, these statistics back up the need for them,” concluded Viktor. “It makes you expect that more strict measures are on the way but it just seems like the government is currently at a crossroads of how to approach that and find a balance.

“They have to be careful not to drive companies away from the market as much as they need to protect customers. We are in the UK, we know from experience that this could be a very difficult task to achieve. We’ve been lucky that reforms have been great, in my opinion, and they ease all sides of the spectrum, but it seems like Australia is in the process of achieving that.”