Deputy Chair Dr Ron Ben-David presentation to service providers at the VGCCC's roundtable forum on gambling harm

Speaking to the position statement he noted: 

• The statement leaves no doubt as to where the Commission stands on minimising and preventing harm from gambling. It represents a line in the sand - it makes clear that the future is not going to be the same as the past.  

• There are four key themes running through the statement: 

1. We recognise, without qualification, that gambling causes harm to people who participate in gambling activities as well as other people – their family, friends, colleagues, as well as the community in which they live. 

2. We make it very clear that harm should be prevented in the first instance and that other circumstances do not alter the fact that someone has experienced, or is experiencing, harm. 

3. We recognise that while community education campaigns and industry regulation are very important in minimising harm, they cannot prevent the risk of harm entirely. 

4. Where the risk of harm remains despite the efforts to contain it through education and regulation, gambling operators, as providers of these products, have a duty to care about, and to act on, preventing harm.   

• For the past 30 years, concerns about harm have been pushed into the margins. The common narrative about gambling had the effect of marginalising harm by only referring to it with the convenient label “problem gambling”; by tying harm to human failure by people who didn’t “gamble responsibly”, characterising harm as present only at the peripheries of society; the peripheries where “responsible” and mainstream people certainly don’t live out their lives.  

• The Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission was created almost a year ago reflecting the community’s despair and fury following the Royal Commission into Crown Casino. It was created to reflect changing community standards toward gambling and the harm it causes. Those changing community standards now form the keystone of everything we do. Our legislation has made it that way - our legislated objective is to minimise gambling harm and problem gambling.  

• The link between gambling and harm is established, just like the link between smoking and cancer is established. Of course, that doesn’t mean everyone who smokes gets cancer, or everyone who gets cancer has smoked. Likewise, the relationship between gambling and the harm it causes will vary. It’s about a relationship between cause and effect. It is not a statement about prevalence or likelihood of that relationship. It is a statement about consequence, and we consider it to be unequivocally true - Gambling causes harm. We will not turn away from recognising that harm is caused, even if there are mitigating factors.  

• If someone has recovered from harm – or has the capacity to recover – that does nothing to lessen the harm that was caused in the first place by gambling. And by implication, whether or not someone has, or can, recover from harm, does not alter how we regulate the industry or how we will pursue our statutory objective of minimising gambling harm.  

• Preventing harm requires a concerted effort by multiple parties. These efforts include educating players (and in fact the whole community) so that they are in the best position possible to make informed decisions about their gambling. It also includes regulation and a regulator who will enforce the law.   

• The gambling industry is highly competitive. This means operators are always looking for an edge over their rivals. When a gambling product or environment (whether physical or online) is made more attractive, it also makes more gambling more attractive; and more gambling must be presumed to increase the risk of harm. This dynamic is not altered by the fact that a regulator may approve products for lawful sale. A lawfully offered gambling product does not mean the product cannot cause harm.  

• Regulation is one of the available tools to protect the community from harm – but regulation is not perfect. It can never address all the ways in which harm may be caused or experienced. This limitation has always been true, but it is more-true today than ever before. The gambling industry is one of the most innovative industries on earth. Technology has supercharged that innovative dynamic. As a regulator, we know we must constantly be on the look-out for new ways in which harm may be caused and experienced – and, working with governments and other regulators, we must be alert to the need to evolve what we do and how we do it.  

• We expect gambling operators – businesses who choose to offer products and environments which expose the community to the risk of harm – to bear their share of responsibility for preventing harm. That responsibility means operators being on a constant look out for harm, and where they see or suspect harm is being caused, they have a positive moral responsibility to act. 

• Operators must take responsibility for the consequences of their decisions to offer harmful products to the community – to uphold the interests of their customers and their communities; to show and take initiative; to go over-and-above merely complying with their legal obligations. We expect gambling providers to operate decently as well as legally.  

Read the full speech (PDF, 174.18 KB)