Gambling should not be funded by credit
While gambling is a legitimate form of entertainment for many Australians, we believe it should not be funded by credit and support a prohibition on the use of credit cards, including via e-wallets, for digital gambling.
Online gambling has changed the way Australians gamble and COVID has accelerated these changes. During the 2020 lockdowns, unlike in the UK, Spain, Sweden and other European countries, Australia’s governments and gambling regulators took no special actions to curb gambling expenditure. When physical venues closed, gambling moved online. A joint study by credit bureau Illion and analytics firm Alpha Beta reported a 67 percent rise in online gambling during the first week of April 2020.A few weeks later, NAB’s transactional analysis showed gambling spend up 62.7% from the same four-week May period the previous year. This was up 50.7% from January.
This is a joint submission from Financial Counselling Australia (FCA), Consumer Action Law Centre and Financial Rights Legal Centre in response to the Senate Inquiry into the Interactive Gambling Amendment (Prohibition on Credit Card Use) Bill 2020.
Read our full submission (PDF).
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