Australians are losing more money to gambling each year than the federal Government spends on aged care and almost as much as it spends on the National Disability Insurance Scheme, a new report has found. Source: The Guardian.
The report by Equity Economics found that despite the cost-of-living crisis, the amount of money being lost to gambling has significantly increased.
Expenditure on gambling has also risen faster than the cost of education, housing and inflation.
“There is a hidden, unspoken black hole in household budgets that government cost-of-living policies has failed to address,” the report said. “This black hole is gambling losses.
“Governments have responded swiftly in recent years to the cost-of-living crisis, but there had been a complete policy vacuum on mitigating the cost-of-living impacts of gambling,” the report said.
“Lower-income households are particularly vulnerable, as the rising cost of essential goods and services further squeezes already tight budgets, leaving even less room for unexpected expenses, emergencies, or discretionary spending.”
According to the report, Australians lose $31.5 billion to the gambling industry each year. The authors drew a direct comparison to the $28.3 billion the Commonwealth Government spends on the aged care sector each year and the $35.2 billion it allocates for the NDIS.
The report was commissioned by the Alliance for Gambling Reform and Wesley Mission, which are both long-term campaigners for stronger restrictions on gambling advertising and operating hours.
The alliance’s chief executive, Martin Thomas, said gambling was often ignored as a cost-of-living impact on families.
Wesley Mission’s chief executive, Stu Cameron, said state and federal governments had not taken enough action to address “spiralling gambling losses”.
The Equity Economics report said gambling losses “disproportionately burden those households least able to afford them”.
The NSW Government yesterday announced it no longer planned to remove 9500 poker machines from the state over the next five years, despite pledging to do so before the state election.
FULL STORY
Australians lose more money to gambling in a year than government spends on aged care, report finds (By Henry Belot, The Guardian)
