Gambling survey finds support for pokies reform

Updated

The push for pre-commitment technology to be installed on poker machines has been boosted by the results of a national survey on attitudes towards gambling.

The Australian National University (ANU) survey of more than 1,000 people found strong support for pre-commitment betting limits on poker machines.

Overall, seven in 10 respondents agreed that gambling in Australia needed to be more tightly controlled, while three out of four respondents say people should nominate how much they will spend before gambling.

The Federal Government is still negotiating with the states on a compulsory pre-commitment scheme.

Independent Tasmanian MP Andrew Wilkie says his support for Julia Gillard's minority government is dependent on the introduction of poker machine reforms.

The Government plans to implement mandatory pre-commitment systems for high-intensity poker machines by 2014.

Dr Tanya Davidson from the university's Centre for Gambling Research says the proposal was backed by regular gamblers as well as non-gamblers.

"This reflects a general support in the Australian public for the broad principle of pre-commitment - that people should pre-commit to an amount of money they nominate before they start to gamble," she said.

"It tends to suggest that people on the whole may think that the principle behind commitment is not going too far, or it is not too heavy-handed."

The vast majority of respondents in the May survey also believe there are too many opportunities for gambling and it should be discouraged.

But two-thirds of respondents believed people should have the right to gamble whenever they want and a sizeable group, 42 per cent, also believe the Government has no right to restrict gambling.

Dr Davidson says the responses varied depending on how the question was presented.

"No right to restrict [gambling] is quite a strongly worded question. Whereas if you pose something more gently people tend to agree with things," she said.

Stigma

The poll found most people associated problem gambling with poker machines, followed by betting on horse or greyhound racing.

A large proportion of people said they would not know where to turn for help if they or a friend or family member had a gambling problem.

The ANU researchers also found that many people associated problem gambling with alcohol abuse, suicide, marital problems, parental neglect and being less compassionate.

They said these attitudes were likely to lead to stigma and discrimination against people with gambling problems.

The ANU poll also found that 28 per cent of people did not gamble at all. Nearly half had gambled on something other than lottery or scratchies in the past year.



Topics: gambling, federal-government, australian-national-university-0200

First posted