Nothing, as the saying goes, is as powerful as an idea whose time has come.
And that applies double when the idea is so obvious it would kill a brown dog.
The idea in question right now is: let’s stop the saturation of every damn sports event with wall-to-wall gambling advertising. Let’s protect our kids, ourselves and, most particularly, those who can’t help themselves by getting sucked into the gaping maw of an industry where every adherent – no exceptions – loses in the long term.
It’s a subject your humble correspondent has been banging on about for years, and it now looks to be close to achieving a critical bipartisan mass – and pushed hard by the Teals – to bring in the legislation to, if not stop it, at least limit the damage.
In the words of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this week, “the status quo, of saturation of gambling advertising where children are exposed to it, is untenable.”
Everyone who counts now recognises that, with the only questions being when the much-needed reforms will come, and how deeply they will bite. Broadly, the only ones who oppose are those who gorge subsequent gambling losses; the online bookies; we in the media that carry the ads; and the sports that offer up their fans as raw material for the gambling industry to chew up.
Credit: Getty/Supplied/Jamie Brown
There are three remaining pillars of defence, trotted out by those benefiting:
- We are not children, and we should be able to make up our own minds whether we gamble;
- Get in back in your box, you wowsers; what happened to the larrikin spirit?
- Without the revenue from gambling advertising important industries such as free-to-air television, including Channel Nine – which is owned by Nine Entertainment – which also owns this masthead – and your favourite sports team will die.
In order of rebuttal:
- Yes, but the children are children. When they first mooted banning cigarette advertising this was the most vociferous argument put. And so the damage was still done for decades after the devastation was recognised. (I escaped, mostly, but to this day, somewhere deep in my psyche, I associate a certain brand of cigarettes with the gorgeous blonde woman skiing and smoking, who I kept seeing on the billboard near the Oak Milkbar at Peats Ridge when my mind was not formed up enough to resist.) As Senator David Pocock noted in an interview this week, “When three out of four young people now think betting is just a normal part of enjoying sport, [when] as a country that loses the most per capita in the world, $25 billion a year, [we have a problem]. That is terrifying, that young people now just think, well, that’s normal – $25 billion a year. Sure, it’s a big figure, but behind it lies lives ruined, families that have been torn apart, young men who have committed suicide because of the hole that they have got themselves into with gambling addictions. This is something we have to tackle, and we have an opportunity.” Does anyone, seriously, argue?
- Oh, please. The laughable “wowsers” charge would stick if you were saying ban all gambling. No one serious is saying that. What we’re saying is that it should, in fact, be just like smoking – do it if you must, but at least be fully informed of the risks, and from now on, it should be illegal to make glamorous that which is demonstrably damaging.
- Yup. Yup. Yup. Exactly the same arguments were put forth by tobacco for sports particularly. “Rugby league would die without Winfield money!” It was nonsense then, and is nonsense now. The tobacco mob knew that the game was up, but still delayed until their noses bled, eking out the last addicts, seeking out the last quid, before their show closed down. Sports gambling advertising is at the “end of days” stage where everyone knows it can’t last, but keep hammering the “let’s just bring sanity slowly” so everyone can work out how to adapt. With every week that passes now with wall-to-wall sports gambling advertising, irreversible damage is being done. This is realised, and conceded, by all. So why should the ban be delayed, or watered down?
Let’s get on with it!
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