Hooked: Inside the murky world of Australia’s gambling industry. By Quentin Beresford. NewSouth Publishing; 352 pages; $39.99
“Of all the prime ministers I’ve known, and I’ve known all of them since Menzies, Albanese is the most gambling-captured prime minister I’ve ever seen”, Tim Costello is quoted as saying in Quentin Beresford’s 2025 book Hooked: Inside the murky world of Australia’s gambling industry.
Detailing the history of the gambling industry and its tight connection with the Australian political class, Hooked provides the case for meaningful gambling reform, something neither major political party is willing to implement.
The Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026, which passed parliament in August, hardly scratches the surface of an industry that includes sport betting, both at TABs and online, pokies, casinos and more.
Australian gambling losses are now at a staggering $31.5 billion per year, and have been consistently rising since records began in the mid-1970s. The new legislation doesn’t ban advertising or inducements (like free bets or text messages). It doesn’t remove poker machines from our communities. And it leaves the casinos free to continue operating.
Despite being deemed “the strongest ever gambling reforms” by Communications Minister Anika Wells’ office, the bill stops short of seriously impacting the companies making mega-profits. Beresford’s book gives insight into why, despite there being overwhelming popular support for gambling reform, both Labor and Liberal governments have never been willing to do it.
The entrance of the poker machine was a major turning point in the history of gambling in Australia. In New South Wales in 1956, pokies were legalised and rugby league clubs were given the sole right to operate them. These clubs, according to one expert quoted in Hooked, “‘subordinated their social agenda to economic interests’ and grew wealthy on the back of poker machines”.
These league clubs were often the centre of the community. In the 1960s, the South Sydney Junior Leagues Club had 45,000 members. It offered facilities and activities that were not always available to working-class people, like squash courts, a swimming pool, lounge and library. But it also had 111 poker machines, with more on order.
The profits that came from these poker machines in clubs all across New South Wales became the key source of income for the rugby clubs. Beresford quotes the CEO of South Sydney, who recalled that they became “fat, dumb and happy” on the profits from the machines. By the end of the 1960s, there were 20,000 poker machines across New South Wales. Today, more than 80,000 are operating across the state. This is an increase in poker machines that is twice the rate of population increase.
The relationship between the sports codes and the gambling industry has continued apace. After the release of Labor MP Peta Murphy’s report “You Win Some, You Lose More” in 2023 following a Senate inquiry, the “heavyweights of free-to-air TV and the football codes went all-out to lobby the Albanese government to prevent an ad ban”. This is because it’s not just sports clubs that rely heavily on a revenue stream from pokies. The AFL receives at least $30 million from gambling agencies revenue, and the NRL $50 million.
The NRL still has direct relationships with gambling agencies, with half the clubs sponsored by agencies. The revenue they receive is not taxed, as both institutions are not-for-profits. The free-to-air broadcasters get around 11 percent of their revenue from gambling ads. This amounts to $150 million from gambling advertising each year. These relationships mean that there are multiple institutions lobbying the government; the broadcasters, the clubs and the gambling companies themselves.
One chapter in Beresford’s book details the way these lobbying efforts helped to destroy attempts at reforming the industry by Andrew Wilkie, an independent MP from Tasmania. Wilkie had struck up an agreement with then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who was returned to power in a minority government with support from the Greens and independents. Wilkie’s main interest was the gambling industry, which had sucked huge amounts of money from Tasmanians via poker machines and the Wrest Point casino in Hobart. This was Australia’s first legal casino, approved by a Labor government in 1968 following a referendum.
Wilkie had previously campaigned against Coles and Woolworths and those companies’ connection with poker machines. At the time, Woolworths had a 75 percent stake in Australian Leisure and Hospitality Group, which ran pokies machines out of its hotels and pubs. Whistleblowers who worked at ALH venues reported patrons urinating at their seats rather than leave and lose “their” machines, and free drinks and food to keep gamblers feeding their money into the pokies. One quote from the book describes the scene:
“Wilkie’s whistleblower was deeply affected by what he had observed of ALH’s behaviour. In a statement to Wilkie, he said: ‘Over the years I’ve seen people crying at their machines or urinating on their chairs because they have been playing for so long, they’ll stay all day and sometimes wet themselves. It’s not right, how can that be right?’”
Eventually, the controversy around Woolworths’ ownership of ALH, including rewards programs that encouraged frequent gambling, led both Coles and Woolworths to divest from poker machines.
Wilkie had tied his support for Gillard’s government to gambling reform, specifically, to introduction of a mandatory pre-commitment, meaning people would have to commit to a loss limit before money could be inserted into the machines. Beresford writes:
“If it could be made to work, [mandatory pre-commitment] had the potential to puncture the profits of gambling companies and shave off a slice of the revenue going to state governments—and, of course, to help addicts.”
Despite agreements, Gillard eventually backflipped and refused to introduce any gambling reform legislation. A key reason was the lobbying efforts of the gambling companies.
The sheer scale of the gambling industry’s lobbying activity is mind-boggling. The Transparency International study found that the peak gambling body Responsible Wagering Australia had used more than 100 lobbyists, Sportsbet more than 70, Star Entertainment 60 and Tabcorp more than 50.
Another factor stymieing reform is the revenue governments, both state and federal, gain from taxing gambling companies, which amounts to almost $10 billion annually. Yet another is the involvement the Labor Party itself has in the industry.
The ACT Labor Club, for example, is one of the largest poker machine operators in Canberra and funnels profits directly into the party’s investment arm, the 1973 Foundation. And as Beresford notes, “The New South Wales branch had built up $45 million in assets in the Randwick Labor Club, a venue that had poker machines”.
Beresford details the relationship between the Labor Party and the gambling industry:
“Let’s not forget it was a Labor government that set up the clubs industry in the mid-1950s, a Labor government that introduced Australia’s first legal casino in Tasmania, and a Labor government that paved the way for the proliferation of poker machines into hotels.”
One stark example of this relationship is in Victoria, where the Joan Kirner Labor government not only introduced 10,000 machines into the state but also spent “$260 000 on television advertisements promoting poker machines”. Selling off public assets and introducing big gambling was a way for the government to increase state revenue in a period of financial downturn.
This is the real story of working-class life and the impacts of gambling. Essential services are stripped away. Public services that improve our lives, like a state bank, telecom and government energy provision, and public transport were sold off and privatised. Our communities were flooded with hotels and pubs that made most of their profits via poker machines. Our sports codes were funded by gambling. Money was funnelled from the bottom of society to the top.
The human impact is real. Rates of domestic violence increase with the number of poker machines in a suburb. More domestic violence is reported on grand final days. People lose their homes, their jobs and their lives due to gambling addiction. Beresford writes:
“Only recently has it been established that the gambling problem of a single individual has direct negative effects on at least six others, which decreases the quality of life of those affected by between 10 percent and 28 percent.”
And it is working-class communities that bear the brunt of this.
Beresford details the relationship of the industry to the underbelly of society: mobs, gangs and mafiosos using the casinos as places to launder money, have meet-ups of gangland figures, engage in drug trade and human trafficking. If only this sort of corruption and criminality was as reviled as that of the CFMEU!
But the main story of the book is the way that the politicians, especially Labor governments, gave the green light to this disgusting industry. They legalised casinos, poker machines and online betting agencies, and gave their approval for advertising this industry that makes money only by stealing it from patrons.
The Albanese government’s paltry reforms will do nothing to stem the bleeding of those who suffer as a result of this parasitic industry. The government won’t act decisively, because it is addicted to the profits that gambling provides. Labor is tied up in an industry that is destroying working-class people. We need real action, including banning gambling advertising and shutting down poker machines and casinos. Until this happens, billions will continue to be lost to these companies.
Beresford’s book is well worth reading.
