Re-regulating the Gambling Industry: Regulatory Reform in Victoria and New South Wales, 1999–2006

Abstract

Historically, in Australia, gambling policy and regulation have been the sole responsibility of Australian State and Territory governments. However, in 1998–99 the Commonwealth commissioned an unprecedented national inquiry into gambling that was highly critical of existing gambling policies and regulatory regimes. The Productivity Commission proposed a ‘blueprint’ for an effective, independent gambling regulatory system. Seven years on, this article revisits Australian gambling regulation to present a contextualised account of regulatory reform in Victoria and New South Wales (NSW). It finds that that they have taken a markedly different approach to structural reform. Neither State has adopted the Productivity Commission's ‘ideal’ regulatory model. Reforms have been shaped by local circumstances and government priorities, rather than the regulatory principles and functions outlined by the Productivity Commission.

Notes

¹The first occasion occurred in 1901 when the new Commonwealth government sought to prevent interstate lottery sales through the post (McMillen et al. 1999, 103).

²Territories assumed responsibility for gambling on self-government - the Northern Territory in 1978 and the ACT in 1988.

³Despite this achievement and contrary to the PC's findings that a well-regulated Internet gambling industry was preferable to prohibition, in 2001 the Commonwealth intervened again to ban Internet gaming licences (McMillen 2000, 2003a, 2003b).

⁴IPART is a statutory agency that regulates prices of monopoly services in NSW (e.g. gas, electricity and water).

⁵IPART's 1998 and 2004 inquiries were conducted by different teams.

⁶At the time of writing, a statutory review of the Gaming Machines Act 2001, which is required every 5 years. While the review found that the Act provides protection for vulnerable members of the community, it recommended ‘changes that aim to minimise excessive regulation [to] provide much greater certainty for businesses … in the gaming machine industry' (Minister for Gaming and Racing 2007, 9).

⁷In December 2006, Tattersall's was granted a temporary 12-month extension of its lottery monopoly until 2008. Following the review, a new licensing policy was announced in April 2008 which will remove the duopoly licences held by Tattersall's and Tabcorp in 2012, introducing a more competitive industry structure (Department of Justice 2008).

⁸The only NSW gambling prevalence study since 1999 was published in 2007 (ACNielsen 2007).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jan McMillen

Jan McMillen was Australia's first professor of gambling research at the Australian Institute for Gambling Research (University of Western Sydney), and subsequently at The Australian National University Centre for Gambling Research. She has special interests in gambling policy and regulation, the study of gambling impacts and social policy. John Wright has a PhD (University of Melbourne, Centre for Public Policy). In 2006 he was appointed to ANU as Research Fellow to assist with the ARC Discovery Program [grant] (McMillen DP044600-28) which supported this research. The authors express their gratitude to regulators and colleagues who provided information and constructive comments on a draft of this article.