Dear Sydney,
You have a serious problem and you know it. This week, for the first time, it was on display for the world to see.
You can see it when you visit almost any pub, when your small bar or restaurant closes early but the ‘VIP Lounges’ keep flashing on your way home, or when you’re ‘locked out’ of every venue at night except for venues with it inside (or the casino, which is open 24 hours of course).
Now you can even see it on the sails of our World Heritage listed building: the Sydney Opera House, one of the most famous landmarks of modern humanity.
The problem is gambling in all forms and it’s rife within our sport, media, politics and general Aussie psyche — so much so that we continuously play it down and think it is totally OK.
Australia was the first country to deregulate gambling, and it shows.
Just last year, $23.7 billion was gambled away in Australia. To put this into perspective, Australian state governments received over $5.5 billion in revenues over the last couple of decades from racing and gambling — an increase of 57 per cent in a decade ($2.06 billion).
Most of this is made in NSW, which is so intertwined with an industry that generates such an outsized income stream for them, that it can ignore 310,000 signatures against a racing advertisement on the Opera House. The NSW government alone received $366.7 million from 2014–2017 racing revenues alone.
Gambling on our ANZAC national day of remembrance? Just a bit of fun. Putting a few dollars into the pokies when out with mates? Just for a laugh. Stopping work to watch a horse race? Totally fine (as long as the whole family puts down some bets). Advertising the richest barely 2-year-old horse race, where the primary accompaniment is gambling, on the sails of our Opera House? No big deal.
Today’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison said we need to stop being so “precious” about it, another minister said we should “chill out”, while the NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian thinks advertising the richest horse race is the “the right thing for Sydney”.
If you think I’m overreacting let’s take a look:
- The losses per resident in Australia on gaming are the highest in the world — 2.4 times higher than our nearest rival (Source: The Economist)
- Australia has the world’s highest per-capita amount of gaming machines with 198,000 machines of which 73% are in NSW (2015)
- It seems there are select politicians on both sides who are trusted, or at any rate supported by lobbyists. “[It] is clear that gambling reform has been stymied by powerful vested interests. This has been facilitated — in fact, made possible — by very poor political donation disclosure laws.” (The Conversation)
The shockingly hypocritical side of this whole saga — not including our very own radio shock jock Alan Jones threatening the Opera House CEO live on air — was that the advertised projection occurred during NSW National Gambling Awareness week.
Do we really want gambling and pokies machines as part of nearly every national past time?
Can we not instead have quality live events and venues that survive off decent entertainment and not lazily rely on gambling subsidies?
At what point do we decide Australians are spending too much on gambling?
Sydney, and Australia, you have a problem and it’s gambling. Only this time you’re betting on a more prosperous future.
A special thanks to Ben Grubb and James Bailey for editing this article.
I write about life, tech and entrepreneurship Down Under. If that sounds like fun you can subscribe here ✌️
