AS the ABC reported – drugs, sex and multi-million dollar high rollers are themes more often featured in a Hollywood film than a Parliamentary hearing, but the Gambling Inquiry has been the exception.
The explosive evidence heard at the opening of a two-day inquiry into Labor’s proposed crackdown on wagering advertising has proved a watershed moment for the increasingly friendless Bill.
The Greens and Cross-benchers have long opposed the Federal Government’s draft, but in the last week the Coalition also joined the chorus calling for significant changes.
Mere weeks ago, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used the last Question Time before the winter break to pour ice-cold water on the prospect of his Government strengthening its legislation.
He implored Parliament to pass the reforms, which curtail ads on television and radio at certain times, bans them in stadiums and on player uniforms, and require an online opt-out, but offered a bleak alternative to those who wanted more.
HERE’S the thoughts of our SYDNEY contributor PETER MAIR on what is happening:
RACING & ‘GENEROSITIES’
CONSIDER ‘gambling harm’, media-coverage of form-guided betting-on-the-races is widely accepted to be permissible. It is very different to mainstream-media promotion of competitive gambling offerings – robotic machine-gambling and, emotionally contaminated, sports-betting.
The cultural-addiction of punters to betting on racing is being exploited rather than respected.
The disrespect is most evident in Victoria where an enduring cultural-addiction to racing gambling was, and is, long underwritten by its ban on poker-machines.
In Australia, this business model, for racing, is more likely to portend damnation than salvation. Talk about a once industry leader, globally, losing caste – the demise of RVL has been shameful, now almost beyond redemption.
Disrespecting RVL administrators are apparently committed to taking advantage of loyal racing customers – programming race-fields, inflated with long-priced ‘chancers’, induced and rewarded for running 10th. The retribution in Victoria is a relentlessly unfolding story. Connections, alert to the deception, scratch acceptors drawn-wide. The outcome is more feast-or-famine racing akin to ‘Zac-Purton’ racing in Hong Kong.
Beyond Victoria, a local racing administrator on long-service leave apparently considers ‘betting inducements …. offered by wagering companies….. to be harmless ‘generosities’ .. regulations proscribing them would be ‘unnecessary overreach’.
Considered objectively, ‘generosities’ is itself a gratuitously, self-serving, semantic ‘overreach’. Wagering-companies are inducing profits, not generously giving money away — they are smarter than only mug-punters allowed accounts.
Back to business,
………. across the gambling landscape, racing would benefit from proscriptions on inducements more likely to encourage gambling with poker-machines and on ‘sports’, other than racing.
The Australian community, as a whole, is clearly saying ‘stop’ to any and all promotional advertising of gambling on mainstream media.
Racing would be a beneficiary of a national ‘stop’.
………… as well, sports-administrator conflicts of interest with racing would best be resolved sooner than later.’
