There are some industries where the risk to customers is, and always will be, very real. Gambling is such an industry. Even the willfully blind know that some customers take their own lives once gambling has exhausted their financial resources or when the shame of the addiction becomes too much to bear.
It is for that reason that effective consumer protection is necessary. Landmark competition reforms, formulated by Paul Keating in 1997 and signed up to by the states, didn’t lock this in. A national consumer protection framework for gambling was finally adopted in 2018 but it pales in comparison with protections available to consumers in banking, insurance and energy.
This flaw in Australia’s competition policy reforms is the reason why the Northern Territory, despite being home to just more than 1% of all Australians, is also home to most of Australia’s gambling businesses.
