Our gambling obsession is doing great harm to addicts and their families

I grew up in a strict, Salvation Army household where there was no drinking, smoking or gambling. My parents wore their uniforms everywhere they went. Women wore no makeup or jewellery. Young boys like me weren’t allowed to go to the pictures.

My parents were strict, but loving. I had no problem with any of this except the ban on movies. We kids played cards, but not with ordinary playing cards. Why not? Because people might think we were gambling. So we played Snap, and Happy Families, with cards depicting Mr Bun the baker and his family.

After I left home I gave up these old-fashioned strictures. But they left me convinced of the damage that addiction to alcohol and gambling can do to people and, especially, their families, often deprived of enough money to live on.

So when the last act of the late Peta Murphy, a Victorian federal MP, was a parliamentary inquiry calling for greater control over the modern scourge of online betting, I was happy to join the cause. It’s way past time we stopped allowing businesses and even the members of licensed clubs to benefit from the harm done to addicts and their families.

As the Grattan Institute and its chief executive Aruna Sathanapally reminded us in last week’s report, Australia has a gambling problem unmatched by other, more sensible rich countries. Our annual gambling losses exceed $1600 per adult. That’s twice what people lose in America or Britain, and almost three times what our Kiwi cousins shell out.

Why are our gambling losses so much greater? Not because of the romantic delusion that Aussies would gamble on “two flies crawling up a wall”, but because our governments have done less than others to protect us from people who just want to make a buck at our expense.

Grattan tells us that, in total, Australians lose about $24 billion a year on gambling. Half of this comes from poker machines and another quarter from betting on sport and racing. Lotteries, scratchies and casinos make up the rest.

By far the most addictive are pokies and fast-growing online betting, so these are the ones to worry about. When it comes to politicians failing to protect us from having our susceptibilities exploited, successive NSW governments take the cake.

They were the first to let licensed clubs become addicted to revenue from pokies, then let hotels have them too. But eventually, the malady spread to other states. NSW has 14 pokies per 1000 adults, ahead of Queensland on 11.

More sensible Victoria has just six machines per 1000 adults, but Western Australians manage to live normal, happy lives with just 0.7 per 1000.

Poker machines were once called “one-armed bandits”. Now they’re just bandits. Although Australia has only about 0.3 per cent of the world’s population, it has 18 per cent of the world’s pokies. NSW accounts for about half of that.

As for online betting, its ubiquitous ads make it the most noticeable. It’s a safe bet it will grow to be a bigger problem than today. But so far, it’s of little interest to women, with young adult men by far the most susceptible.

Now, the vast majority of people who gamble do so in moderation, and do themselves no harm. But a small minority of pokie players and online betters become addicted. Grattan quotes data from debit card use showing that 5 per cent of gamblers account for 77 per cent of the spending.

That’s what makes pokies and betting so exploitative. Addiction can harm people’s financial security, health and broader wellbeing. Addicts can lose their jobs, smash their marriages, commit family violence, engage in fraud, be declared bankrupt and take their own lives.

I’m unforgiving of business people and club members who want to benefit from gambling – and politicians who lack the courage to hold them back – while turning a blind eye to all the human suffering gambling causes.

Grattan wants the feds to ban all gambling advertising and inducements, while state governments reduce the number of pokies over time.

It wants the feds to establish a national, mandatory “pre-commitment system” for all online gambling. Each state should introduce a similar pre-commitment scheme for pokies.

Pre-commitment schemes were invented by behavioural economists to allow us, in our more sensible moments, to impose limits on our own behaviour when we’re acting in the heat of the moment.

Grattan wants such commitments to be compulsory for all people that start using clubs, pubs or online betting sites after the scheme starts. You choose the limits you want to set on your spending per day, per month and per year. You can lower those limits any time you wish, but can raise them only after a delay of at least a day. The scheme would also impose maximum limits of say, $100 a day, $500 a month and $5000 a year.

Most gamblers would be unaffected by this scheme, but for others it would stop them ruining their lives. The clubs and pubs and big online betting companies will tell us it would destroy the economy. Don’t believe them.

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Politics of self-interest feeds the inner beast

Barring the start of World War III, we may never hear an Australian politician repeat John Fitzgerald Kennedy's unforgettable line, "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country".

Nobility be hanged. There was a time when our leaders saw it as their job to bring out the best in their followers. These days, they see their best chance as pandering to our dark side - our fears, our weaknesses, our selfishness.

These days, self-centredness not only comes naturally, it's officially encouraged. On what basis should you decide which politician to support? The one that's offering you the best deal, of course.

Why do our leaders have such a low opinion of our motivations? Perhaps for the same reason people who lie a lot always expect other people to be lying. Despite their protestations to the contrary, most politicians seem motivated less by a burning desire to make the world a better place than by ambition for personal advancement. They simply assume we are like they are.

Then there's the influence of economists. The doctrine of economic rationalism not only assumes self-interest to be normal and altruism to be non-existent, it sanctifies self-interest as a civic virtue.

Adam Smith, founder of modern economics, said a lot of noteworthy things, but few are quoted more than this: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our necessities but of their advantages."

Be as selfish as you like because selfishness is what makes the economy work.

But here's a balancing quote from the great man that's much less often repeated: "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it."

There are two sides to our nature; we do have our "better angels" as Abraham Lincoln put it, but at present our lesser selves are in the ascendancy.

Perhaps another influence on the politicians is their resort to the techniques of marketing to further their pursuit of power. Marketers have no hesitation in appealing to our envy, lust or greed.

In their world, use of the word "indulgence" is taken to be enticing, not a condemnation. "You deserve it" and "because you're worth it", advertisers assure us. My favourite is an ad for a cinema candy bar: "in the dark, no one can see you". Go ahead, guts yourself.

Marketers use focus groups to test products and make sure they're giving the customers exactly what they want. Politicians use them to make sure they're telling voters exactly what they want to hear.

At least since John Howard's last days, people in focus groups have been complaining about the rising cost of living. Really? That's a new one. When the most people can do is complain about the cost of living it's a sign they've got nothing bigger to worry about. I suspect it's the product of our having gone 20 years without a severe recession. When you're worried about keeping your job, you don't complain about the cost of living.

And yet both sides of politics are perpetually echoing back to the electorate their professed concern about how tough times are. Tony Abbott's remarkably successful scare campaign against the carbon tax - it's actually not half as bad as the goods and services tax, and certainly far less disruptive than the effect of the high dollar on manufacturing and tourism - preys on people's worries about the cost of living.

When Howard was introducing the GST a lot of people's attitude was: "I don't like the sound of it one bit, but if you're insisting on it I suppose it must be in the best interests of the country." Much the same could be said of the carbon tax, yet far fewer people are saying it - nor are they being encouraged to think that way.

As it's understood by scientists, our preoccupation with our own interests usually extends to the protection of our own family. But there seems little sign of concern for the wellbeing of our children and grandchildren in the carbon tax debate. We've been encouraged to focus only on our immediate worries about balancing the household budget.

But for unbridled selfishness there could surely be no more egregious example than the success the licensed clubs have had in stirring their members' opposition to the Gillard government's reluctant championing of compulsory pre-commitment on poker machine use.

If ever there was an action that could be said to be "un-Australian", it's profiting from the addiction of gamblers and all the misery caused to them and their families. The killer statistic is this: according to the Productivity Commission, about 15 per cent of regular poker machine users contribute about 40 per cent of all the money put through pokies.

So the whole edifice of the licensed club industry rests heavily on the exploitation of a small minority of their own members. All the cheap meals and shows, all the grants to local sporting groups - much of that money is coming from the pockets of the spouses and children of problem gamblers.

But those fighting to keep their cheap meals mustn't feel guilty. You're only doing what our politicians, economists and advertisers urge you to do: putting your own interests ahead of other people's, including the less fortunate.

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