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Shocking new findings show that up to 600,000 teenagers under 18 years of age are gambling, spending more than $18 million annually.

Support for banning gambling advertising is widespread, according to new polling from The Australia Institute.

Community and public health groups have expressed concern over reported plans by a lobby group for gambling and alcohol companies to influence the federal election outcome as a way to further stifle public health reform.

Spiraling gambling losses are a bigger drain on the household budget than the cost of electricity and gas while gambling losses are growing at a rate faster than the cost of housing.

New figures showing poker machine losses in NSW have reached a record high of $8.64 billion are horrendous and underscore the urgent need for reform, the CEO of the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Martin Thomas, said.

Alcohol and gambling companies and lobby groups donated $2.474 million to political parties in 2023-24.

After the release of the latest donation figures this week through the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) Transparency Register, the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) and Alliance for Gambling Reform (AGR) jointly called for alcohol and gambling companies to be excluded from making political donations.

Reports the Government won’t respond to the June 2023 Murphy Report on gambling reform prior to the election is the worst outcome of all for children who are being groomed by gambling companies and fails anxious and angry parents.

The decision by the Tasmanian Liberal Rockcliffe Government to backflip on becoming the first State to introduce a poker machine cashless card is an inexcusable capitulation to the power of the gambling lobby.

Chief advocate for the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Tim Costello AO, has issued an Open Letter to the Premier, Jeremy Rockliff, and all members of the State Parliament, urging them to resist the efforts of the gambling lobby to undermine the promised poker machine mandatory pre-commitment card reforms.

Nine Entertainment’s board directors have been urged to end the network’s gambling addiction and the network has been condemned as ‘shameful’ for actively lobbying the Federal Government to scrap gambling reform.

The chief advocate of the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Tim Costello, on the eve of the company’s AGM this Thursday condemned Nine’s reliance on gambling advertising and compared it to tobacco advertising.

Gambling companies, racing clubs and their lobbyists are showering Australian Federal politicians with gifts, tickets and hospitality as our leaders continue to deliberate major gambling reforms including a total ban on gambling advertising.

Some 32 parliamentarians received 60 gifts in this session of parliament including tickets to shows, races, dinners and sporting events. And this is likely just the tip of the iceberg as only gifts worth over $300 must be declared.

The Alliance has welcomed Pope Francis condemnation of gambling advertising in which the pontiff said he was sad to see football matches and sports stars promoting betting platforms.

In a message to social justice groups, Pope Francis, expressed deep concern with online gambling and the misuse of networks, which affect not only the poorest sectors of society but all social classes.

Online betting has spiked by more than 50% in the last five years with losses now totalling $9 billion dollars, undermining Prime Minister Albanese’s comments that online gambling isn’t the problem.

The Alliance for Gambling Reform’s Chief Advocate, Tim Costello said the Prime Minister has taken a chapter right out of the gambling industry’s playbook when he argued against a full ban on gambling advertising.

Australian’s gambling losses have soared to $32 billion. These new horrifying figures increase pressure on our political leaders to make urgent reforms to limit gambling harm including a total ban on gambling ads.

The new figures collated by Queensland Treasury found that national gambling losses for 2022/23 totalled $32 billion. Previously the only available loss figures were for 2018/19 which totalled $25 billion.

The average loss per Australian adult was $1,555 per year – up from $1,307 (18/19)

The Alliance’s Chief Advocate, Tim Costello, has sought an urgent meeting with the Prime Minister after Mr Albanese appeared to wrongly label him a gambling prohibitionist in the national parliament yesterday.

Mr Costello is also urging Mr Albanese to meet face to face with Mark Kempster who has spoken out bravely and powerfully of his experience in losing $100,000s to online gambling.

The Alliance for Gambling Reform has launched a ‘swarm’ campaign targeting three key ALP seats in Sydney coinciding with the football finals, in an effort to increase pressure for a full gambling ad ban.

The online, text and advertising campaign will include sending texts during the Paramatta Eels NRL game on Friday and AFL football finals involving GWS and Sydney on Saturday afternoon.

A new shareholder activism campaign has been launched that targets media companies Nine Entertainment and Seven West in an effort to stop them taking adverts from gambling companies.

But the deadline to be involved in the campaign (Sept 3) is fast approaching.

A new shareholder activism campaign has been launched that targets media companies Nine Entertainment and Seven West in an effort to stop them taking advertisements from gambling companies.

The Alliance for Gambling Reform has joined forces with activist share trading platform SIX to use investor power to stop gambling ads at Australia’s big media companies.

A powerful alliance of former prime ministers and premiers, MPs, union leaders, sport, business, health, union and faith figures, academics, writers, social justice advocates and social service groups have called on the Federal Government and the Opposition to commit to banning all gambling advertising within three years.

Media reports the Federal Government’s will not honour the recommendations of the Murphy report by rejecting recommendations to impose a phased-in ban on all gambling advertising is ‘bitterly disappointing’.

But the Alliance has welcomed a potential crackdown on social media gambling advertising as ‘significant’ and again urged the government to implement all 31 recommendations of the Murphy Report.

The Alliance for Gambling Reform has announced the appointment of Martin Thomas as its new Chief Executive Officer.

The Alliance’s Board Chair, Sharon Dickson, announced the appointment of Mr Thomas after an extensive, nation-wide recruitment process. Mr Thomas has been working as Interim CEO for the last few months

Gamblers experiencing the highest level of harms in Australia represent just over 12% of gamblers but contribute almost half of all gambling revenue according to new data that underscores how the gambling industry preys on people who can least afford it.

“We have long known that the predatory gambling industry does all it can to keep people who are ‘losing big’ to keep on betting, this new data shows just how cynical and ruthless is the industry’s business model,” the CEO of the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Martin Thomas, said.

Victoria has recorded a new, all-time record high in poker machine losses with an annual total loss of $3.03 billion.

“It has been more than a year now since the State Government promised to introduce sweeping reforms that were touted as Australia’s strongest gambling harm reduction laws and we are still waiting,” the Chief Advocate for the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Tim Costello, said.

The Olympics broadcaster, the Nine Network, is on notice not to breach the advertising code by running gambling ads during its free-to-air and online coverage of the Paris games.

Last Olympics the then broadcaster Seven aired 49 betting promotions during its Olympic coverage on its Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide broadcasts. Seven was also found to have made gambling advertisements available on its live stream of the Olympics

More than 35,000 people have signed a petition created by the Alliance for Gambling Reform calling for the Federal Government to ban all gambling advertising.

The petition has 35,243 signatures and the Alliance is now urgently calling for more people to sign up in order to pressure the Federal Government to adopt all 31 recommendations of the Murphy Report which include a phased-in, 3-year ban on all gambling advertising.

Betting companies are taking advantage of weak advertising and consumer protection laws to offer inducements that encourage riskier bets and are cynically targeting people with gambling problems through tailored, personalised marketing.

The State Government will review the Victorian Community Benefits Scheme after analysis released by The Alliance revealed clubs across the state were granting themselves an average of 77% of all the ‘community’ grants’ they made.

The Alliance for Gambling Reform believes the Federal Government has had enough time to consider the recommendations of a parliamentary committee into online gambling and must now move immediately to implement all 31 recommendations of Murphy Report.

The government received the parliamentary report, chaired by Labor MP, Peta Murphy, exactly 12 months ago today and is still yet to deliver its response.

The number of people betting on sports has exploded, doubling in just five years with more than one third of all spending on sports betting now coming from people with a gambling problem, according to new research.

More than a quarter of all men aged 18-24 and a third of men aged 25-34 now bet on sport. Young men are most at risk of falling into problem gambling – with close to 1 in 5 (17.5%) 18-24 year-olds who bet on sports, already defined as having a gambling problem.

Clubs across Victoria are rorting a scheme, which aims to offset the financial harm of pokies, by giving an average of 77% of all the ‘community’ grants’ they make to themselves.

The rorting means they are not only robbing the community of critical funding but also receiving a tax deduction by doing so.

The $67 million fine imposed on Adelaide’s SkyCity Casino in a money laundering case is just another chapter in an appalling litany of failures by casino’s across the country and highlights the need for urgent Federal Government action.

The proposed changes outlined in the VRGF Repeal and Advisory Councils Bill 2024 before the Victorian parliament have been welcomed by The Alliance for Gambling Reform.

The Alliance for Gambling Reform, CEO Carol Bennett said the proposal to disband the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation (VRGF) being debated in the Victorian parliament this week were a step in the right direction.

The AFL is acting hypocritically in taking a minute’s silence at all its games this weekend to highlight gender-based violence while still taking millions of dollars from gambling agencies – when gambling is known to make domestic violence more frequent and more severe.

The data breach by a string of NSW and ACT Clubs is inexcusable and damaging and would have been avoided by a centralised, secure universal cashless gambling card system, the Alliance for Gambling Reform CEO Carol Bennett, says.

The Federal Government must urgently act to close a loophole that excludes predatory online gambling advertising targeting children from being included in the nation’s basic online safety code.

Under current definitions the nation’s Basic Online Safety Expectations (BOSE) gambling advertising is not included among online harms such as hate speech, cyber-bullying and child sexual exploitation.

“The warp-speed growth of online gambling advertising – particularly targeting children and young people – means the government must act urgently to update its actions to protect people online,” the chief executive of the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Carol Bennett, said.

The Chair of the Alliance for Gambling Reform has praised the achievements of its chief executive, Carol Bennett, in putting gambling harm ‘front and centre’ of the nation’s conscience.

Ms Bennett has this week announced her plans to leave the organisation, saying she was proud of what she was able to achieve in the two and half years in the role.

“Carol has worked tirelessly and successfully to highlight the terrible damage Australia’s gambling epidemic is inflicting on people, families and communities across the nation,” Alliance board chair, Sharon Dickson, said.

“Under Carol’s leadership and the work of Tim Costello, the board, staff and our supporters, AGR has been very successful in delivering real progress for gambling reform in Australia.”

The introduction of a mandatory pre-commitment carded gambling system in the ACT would be groundbreaking in reducing gambling harm and placing some limit on the predatory behaviour of a gambling industry that has cost Territorian’s more than $1.2 billion in losses over the last decade.

The chief executive of the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Carol Bennett, said the ACT suffered staggering gambling losses which continued to spiral.

“For a small jurisdiction of under 500,000 people, gambling losses in the ACT are both staggering and tragic. Some $188m in losses were suffered in the last year – equating to an eye-watering $16m every month,” Ms Bennett said.

The operators of Melbourne’s Crown Casino are now ‘on notice’ that there must not be any further breach of its licence, after it received another reprieve by the State’s casino regulator.

The chief executive of the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Carol Bennett, said Crown should make no mistake that it is ‘the last chance saloon’ for them to get their operations right and to protect consumers.

Gambling harm is a major public health issue in Australia and yet is beggars belief that the Federal Government doesn’t report on its expenditure to tackle gambling harm due to “commercial sensitivities”.

The CEO of the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Carol Bennett, said the bizarre situation demonstrated the power of the gambling industry and how it has captured government.

“We know investment into preventing and reducing gambling harm at a federal level is grossly lacking, but the lack of transparency on just how little the government invests in this critical public health issue is both disturbing and farcical,” Ms Bennett said.

The system that governs lobbyists’ access to our Federal parliamentarians is toothless, opaque and excludes an estimated 80% of lobbyists in Canberra, according to the Alliance’s submission to the Inquiry into Access to Parliament House by Lobbyists.

The CEO of the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Carol Bennett, said she was concerned that powerful vested interests from the gambling industry, and their allies, were having “a growing and potentially insidious influence in the corridors of government”.

The voters of Dunkley have honoured Peta Murphy’s legacy by electing a Labor candidate, now it’s time for the Albanese Government to do the same and accept all of the recommendations of the online gambling inquiry that she fought so hard to deliver, even in her last days.

“Certainly, the cost of living was a critical issue in this by-election but so was the white-hot anger in the community about the unchecked power of the gambling industry and the damage it is causing families, especially those doing it tough who are so cynically targeted by gambling companies,” the Alliance for Gambling Reform chief advocate Tim Costello.

The Federal Government should step in to stop the Northern Territory government continuing to offer a tax haven to multi-billion-dollar foreign online gambling operators. It makes no sense for the Northern Territory government to effectively be the online gambling regulator for the nation.

The festive season is ‘a trigger’ for a spike in gambling, increasing the financial toll and stress many families will experience this Christmas, according to the CEO of the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Carol Bennett.

“All the research tells us gambling increases in times of economic hardship and Christmas time brings financial stress, family tension, loneliness, additional free time … all of these are triggers for gambling,” Ms Bennett said.

The gambling lobby’s influence is clear in the ‘watered-down’ bill to ban gambling on credit passed by the Senate, the CEO of the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Carol Bennett, said.

And it is profoundly telling that the Albanese Government and opposition would not contemplate an amendment from independent Senator David Pocock to the bill that would stop political parties from receiving political donations from gambling interests – when it accepted similar prohibitions on tobacco only earlier this week, she said.

The gambling industry hires the most lobbying firms across Australia, more than double that of any other harmful product industry according to new analysis of the Federal lobbyist register.

It reveals that the gambling industry has access to up to 280 lobbyists seeking to influence our Federal political leaders.

The Alliance for Gambling Reform is deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Federal MP for Dunkley Peta Murphy.

“We’ve lost a real champion for gambling reform,” the CEO of the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Carol Bennett, said.

More than 70% of Australians believe there is too much gambling advertising in sport and want it to be banned, according to new polling released by the Alliance for Gambling Reform.

The polling, which involved 1,004 people aged over 18 years, showed 77.6% believed there was too much gambling advertising in sport, while 71.3% thought gambling advertising should be banned from sport completely.

The Victorian Government must immediately adopt all 61 recommendations of a parliamentary inquiry which has detailed a comprehensive blueprint to dramatically cut gambling harm across the State.

The Public Accounts and Estimates Committee (PAEC) report, published today, details a raft of recommendations including the consideration of setting gambling loss limits, reducing the number of poker machines in the State and imposing greater restrictions on gambling advertising.

The Prime Minister must consider urgent changes to his Ministerial Code of Conduct in the wake of more revelations that gambling industry paid for lavish hospitality of Communications Minister, Michelle Rowland.

The expansion of the NSW Government’s needless cashless card poker machine trial will lead to even more delays in its completion and play into the gambling industry’s hands by stalling critical gambling reforms, the CEO of the Alliance for Gambling Reform, Carol Bennett, said.

“Premier Chris Minns should immediately scrap his needless trial of a gambling cashless card and introduce the card now, in the wake of new figures showing NSW suffered a record $8 billion in poker machine losses last financial year,” Ms Bennett said.

Over 20 advocates and researchers are calling on the government to urgently implement major reforms to the Privacy Act in a joint open letter released today.

The signatories, which include leading experts on privacy and assistance services working with affected people, support urgent reforms to Australia’s outdated privacy legislation to protect people from data breaches and misuse.

NSW Premier Chris Minns should immediately scrap his needless trial of a gambling cashless card and introduce the card now, in the wake of new figures showing the State suffered a record $8 billion in poker machine losses last financial year.

The record loss figures affirms past evidence that spikes in gambling losses occur during times of financial stress and hardship.

The Alliance for Gambling Reform’s Chief Advocate, Rev. Tim Costello, said Premier Minns could assist families hard hit by the cost-of-living crisis by immediately introducing a mandatory, pre-commitment gambling card.

The move to exempt lotteries from the credit card ban on gambling is disappointing and reflects the Federal Government’s failure to understand the nature and experience of gambling harm, the Alliance for Gambling Reform, CEO, Carol Bennett said.

Ms Bennett said, “Some lotteries, including games like KenoGO, offer people the chance to win millions of dollars every few minutes.  They run hundreds of games a day, creating the potential to cause great harm.  This harm will be exacerbated as lotteries increasingly move online.”

Poker machine losses in pubs and clubs across five States surged last financial year to $14.54 billion, easily eclipsing the losses suffered in 2018-19, the last full financial year uninterrupted by COVID restrictions.

The States that suffered the biggest spikes in losses were South Australia (up 34.6%), Queensland (up 33.6%) and New South Wales (up 23.7%). Victoria suffered an increase in losses of 12%.

The figures were collated for the Alliance by the Gambling and Social Determinants Unit, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University show that the $14.5b in losses was 13.7% higher than 2018-19 the last full financial year not be impacted by COVID restrictions.

One major Australian industry super fund - which boasts one million members and which promotes itself as a responsible investor - holds more than $351 million in gambling-relating equities, according to new analysis by the Alliance for Gambling Reform.

One major Australian industry super fund - which boasts one million members and which promotes itself as a responsible investor - holds more than $351 million in gambling-relating equities, according to new analysis by the Alliance for Gambling Reform.