Is the answer money? I bet it’s money

we’ve always had a strong outdoors and sporting culture 8<

Yeah sure I guess

>8 and that tends to lend itself to betting and to gambling

say again? Playing cricket at the beach lends itself to betting how? Gambling industry defs tries to push this hard but I dunno if it falls out.

Australians lose an estimated $25 billion a year from gambling […]. And the majority of that is lost through poker machines, but certainly sports betting has been growing in recent years.

So… outdoors and sports doesn’t lend itself to gambling? Actually most gambling is indoors and not sports?

John, gambling victim: I think at the moment, the whole online gambling system is broken in regards to offering the vulnerable punters levels of safety and avoiding gambling harm. Because from my experience, these gambling companies are just there to try and extract every cent out of you.

John is close to realising the fundamental problem of corporations here. We’ll welcome you when you come round comrade.

Bill Shorten spoke out both on Q&A and on Radio National Breakfast about what he thought were the risks if you brought in a blanket ban on gambling advertising. He was worried that if you got rid of the gambling ads and had a blanket ban, that would see the demise of particularly regional TV, journalism in these areas.

So uh gambling is a tax on the vulnerable to fund sports? Sounds like an argument to nationalise the industry shorten, limit harms and so forth? I mean if sports in regional towns needs subsidies lets do it at least. I care more about that than pay rises for pollies and nuclear subs eh?

Steve Cannane: Now, I’m not sure what Bill Shorten was relying on for those figures. He’s never actually told us what the evidence is that suddenly that industry would all fall apart.

lol, lmao even

Steve Cannane: We spoke to Kai Cantwell on Radio National Breakfast. He’s the CEO of Responsible Wagering Australia, and they represent five of the largest sports betting companies in Australia. And he was particularly opposed to an online ban on gambling advertising. And what he was saying was that if you brought something like that in, you would then see an increase of illegal offshore providers and Australians gambling with those offshore providers.

Right, again someone making a strong argument for nationalising the industry then?

Steve Cannane: After that interview, I emailed his office and asked for a source for that Norway study. His office never got back to me about that. So we spoke to Stein Langberget, who worked for the state monopoly, because in Norway, it’s a state monopoly that runs gambling. It’s not private enterprise. And he said that it was only 6% of the market there was offshore. And he said they had decided themselves as the state-run monopoly to stop marketing publicly and stop advertising on TV because they believed it was harming children. And so they took that decision themselves.

Yeah ok so the above mate lies and evidence suggests nationalising it and banning ads?