Sport risks being knocked off its pedestal as it devolves into a vessel for gambling, a former Wallabies captain has warned.
Gambling reform is back in the spotlight after rugby star-turned-senator David Pocock was recently booted from a parliamentary social sports club over concerns about sponsorship from a peak gambling body.
The independent senator, who captained the national rugby union team in 2012, said it was a "national disgrace" the Labor government continued to sit on its hands despite clear evidence of gambling harms amid a rising tide of calls for change.
"We are at a juncture where we risk sport actually being denigrated," he told a panel at South by Southwest Sydney on Wednesday.
"It becomes this thing that is just a vessel for gambling."
During his time as a rugby player, gambling ads were already hard to avoid, he said.
But they've since metastasised.
It has been two years since late Labor MP Peta Murphy handed down a landmark report with 31 recommendations, including a total ban on all gambling advertising.
The government is yet to formally respond.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese previously warned the move could threaten free-to-air TV and community sports organisations, which often rely on gambling company sponsorships for revenue.
While Senator Pocock acknowledged the concerns over TV, he noted solutions to funding problems had been outlined in Ms Murphy's report.
It recommended a levy on online wagering providers to fund gambling harm reduction, and this money could also be extended to other areas, Senator Pocock said.
Mr Albanese has also previously insisted "the problem isn't advertising, the problem is gambling".
Labor introduced new slogans in March 2023 that follow wagering ads to encourage gamblers to rethink and minimise harm.
But journalist and gendered violence expert Jess Hill, who has done extensive work on domestic violence and its links to gambling, said such campaigns were a "complete fail".
"The industry wants to bring it back to individual responsibility and not look at the way these products actually induce addiction and compulsion," she told the panel.
Gambling, including sports betting, has long been linked to domestic violence.
A 2020 Australian Gambling Research Centre report found it intensifies the frequency and severity of intimate partner violence against women.
The ads themselves also played a role, Ms Hill said.
"The gambling industry's advertising uses all of those outdated and rigid forms of masculinity as a way of appealing to young men," Ms Hill said.
"It is literally doing the opposite of what the national strategy (to end violence against children and women) is working towards.
"Advertisers know they set social norms through advertising."
