Gambling reform advocates who met with the Prime Minister’s Office were told that gambling wasn’t as serious an issue as smoking, Crikey can reveal.
Alliance for Gambling Reform advocate Mark Kempster, who last year wrote a piece for Guardian Australia about his own battles with sports gambling addiction, told Crikey that a government adviser made the comparison in late October 2024 after agreeing with meet with two advocates from the alliance.
Both advocates had either personal or family experience of devastating gambling addictions.
Kempster said the comparison was raised after he said he believed gambling was a public health issue.
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“All the research being done says it is the same public health issue as what cigarettes have been in the past”, Kempster told Crikey.
“And when that was brought up, basically the adviser that I spoke to said that they didn’t see it in the same light. They think that one cigarette can do damage, but one bet can’t do the same amount of damage as one cigarette can do, which I strongly disagreed with given my circumstances,” Kempster said.
“Myself and my colleague [also an Alliance for Gambling Reform lived experience advocate] basically said that we found that really difficult to hear, we’ve lived through what one bet can do to someone, what bets can do to people — it is the same, addiction is the same whether it’s cigarettes or alcohol.
“It only takes one bet to get addicted to something, so to not see it in that light was really disappointing to hear. All the research that has been done shows [it is] the same public health issue as any other addiction.”
Kempster told Crikey he initially believed the rest of the meeting to have been “constructive”, but that in light of recent reports of the stakeholders the prime minister and communications minister were meeting with at the same time, “it was probably a bit of lip service they were paying to us at the time. That’s what we believe now”.
The government received the You Win Some, You Lose More report, led by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy, in June 2023, but is yet to announce a response to the report after previously promising one by the end of 2024. The Age reported in January 2025 that any reform was to be shelved until after a federal election, due by mid-May.
Asked what outcomes gambling reform advocates would want, either from lawmakers or from a looming election, Kempster simply said “we want the Murphy report to be taken seriously … we’re not fussed at all [about] who’s in charge after the election”.
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“We have a report sitting on a desk for the last 18 months, which gives you easy guidelines and outlines of how to rein in this industry and how to protect vulnerable Australians, which has not been taken seriously at the moment,” he said.
“It’s been treated with disdain and disrespect at the moment, given the work that Peta Murphy did.”
“[The inquiry] had bipartisan support when it went through the Parliament … it’s got overwhelming support from the public to bring [the recommendations] in. We just want the recommendations to be basically started on.”
The Prime Minister’s Office was contacted for comment but did not respond.
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