Readers of a certain age will recall the Hogan’s Heroes TV series with affection and the implausibility of the Sergeant Schultz defence: “I know nothing.”
But that’s pretty much what the multibillion-dollar gambling industry giants would have us believe.
It wasn’t us.
That’s the response from the industry that has turned Australians into the biggest gambling losers in the world after the deplorable allegations made to a Senate inquiry this week.
It’s not our fault.
It’s not part of our “customer offering”, a euphemism for inducements, to supply drugs and escorts to problem gamblers.
Not to mention bonus bets and the incentives presented to those who are hooked by their VIP “handlers” whose entire job it is to encourage people to pour their money into the profit-making machines of these largely multinational companies.
As federal parliament prepares to debate the government’s gambling “reforms”, the nexus between high-earning sportsmen and the gambling companies that are sponsoring their sports and then preying on their wages should also be homed in on.
Luke Bateman, former NRL player and reformed problem gambler, told the inquiry he attended a private Gold Coast event hosted by a gambling company at which senior figures took illicit drugs with clients.
He rightly pointed out that, at age 23, he was a vulnerable young man. He was also part of the 18-24 cohort that is the fastest growing problem gambling group in the country.
“There were times I would be flown interstate and taken to race days, put in marquees with alcohol and food provided, but before getting there your VIP manager would [ask] … ‘Hey mate, what drugs do you want? Do you want a couple of bags for the weekend?’”
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailWhat was alleged is utterly disgraceful. The gambling industry denies it.
Jules Norton Selzer, the director of corporate affairs for Sportsbet, told the inquiry the company had “zero evidence of the allegations”.
Tabcorp’s head of government affairs, Julian Whealing, said the provision of illicit drugs, sex workers and alcohol was not “part of Tabcorp’s customer offering”.
“Any evidence of this illegal activity should be referred to the relevant authorities.”
It certainly should.
Mark Kempster, who uses his own experience of problem gambling to advocate for the Alliance for Gambling Reform and also fronted the inquiry, can list a bunch of others who have contacted him relating similar experiences.
“I know dozens of examples of what Luke said as well, with the people I’ve worked with. That is a regular occurrence. Those types of things happen across nearly all the major VIP programs that I’ve seen,” he told the inquiry.
And beyond the drugs and prostitutes allegedly offered to high rollers such as Bateman, who says he lost $1m and considered taking his own life as a result, there’s the constant badgering with offers of bonus bets and more.
Anyone who has spent time with a problem gambler will know that the government’s leaky BetStop self-exclusion program is not solving this.
Now, the government plans to cap TV ads at three per hour until 8.30pm (apparently the industry found that amount tolerable), ban radio ads during school drop-off and pick up, ban ads in sports venues and logos on uniforms, ban the use of stars in ads and restrict online ads to adults only.
All of this amounts to the kind of tinkering that has previously increased the number of ads that Australians are being exposed to.
It avoids the substantive recommendations made by the committee led by Labor’s own Peta Murphy more than 1,100 days and $104bn dollars in losses ago; that all betting inducements should be banned, along with gambling ads and a national regulator with teeth stood up to hold the companies to account.
Prioritising the profitability of sport, broadcasting and gambling corporations is a befuddling approach from the federal government, which is being at best pig-headed and at worst negligent as families face collapse caused by the toxic normalisation of betting on sport. The flow-on effects can include family breakdown, domestic violence, mental health issues, financial collapse and, sometimes, death.
“The inducements really destroyed my life because that’s what kept you coming back … when you wanted to get out,” Bateman said. “But it also destroyed the lives of the people who loved me.”
Too many Australian families know this. Some have lost sons and daughters to suicide due to gambling debt. This was a theme that threaded the Senate inquiry evidence.
“There is no gap in knowledge, no gap in evidence and no gap in understanding. The only gaps are in regulation, in oversight and in the willingness to uphold the moral and ethical responsibility that a government owes its people,” said Anna Bardsley, co-founder of Gambling Harm Lived Experience Experts (GHLEE).
“It’s beyond frustrating to know that we have a blueprint in the form of the Murphy report that could end the exploitation and manipulation of people and that this bill is all we get. Frankly, it’s piss-weak.”
We can’t say we didn’t know.
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Zoe Daniel is a three-time ABC foreign correspondent and the former independent member for Goldstein
