Gambling

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“If lotteries get this carve-out and people can use credit cards, it will be the thin edge of the wedge. They will then get carve-outs from future advertising and inducement reforms. We’ll regret this mistake when lotteries are advertised day and night and people increasingly spend large sums of money.”

Ms Levin said lotteries were no longer harmless fun as portrayed by providers. They were now also a far cry from the benign, government-owned public sweeps that we remember from childhood, and which had legislation that mandated donating money to charitable causes.

Read More ‘Not harmless fun’ – Advocates Call for Credit Card Ban to Extend to Scratchies and Lottery Tickets

BET STOP: The National Self-Exclusion Register™

Financial Counselling Australia (FCA) has welcomed the start of Australia’s first online gambling exclusion register, while at the same time calling on governments to expand the facility to casinos, pokies and lotteries.
“We started advocating for this in 2015 and didn’t give up, because we always knew that an online gambling self-exclusion register would help a lot of people,” Ms Levin said.

“Now we call on the state premiers to make BetStop a national register for all forms of gambling, including casinos, pokies, and lotteries. It’s not rocket science to simply give people the protection that they are asking for.”

Read More FCA Welcomes BetStop, Calls for Register to Extend Further

"The sky didn't fall in" Learning from a Churchill Fellowship studying gambling regulation (harm prevention) in Norway, Sweden, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Ireland and the United Kingdom. 2022 Briefing by Lauren Levin, Financial Counselling Australia

As part of Churchill Fellowship Award, Lauren spent eight weeks across eight countries in Europe and UK, meeting with gambling regulators, banks, Financial Ombudsman Services, academics, others in the gambling harm prevention ecosystem and attended an international gambling industry convention to gain insight into what the gambling industry is doing and anticipating.  In this special webinar,…

Read More Join CPRC and CFA for a Briefing by Lauren Levin on the EU and UK Approach to Gambling Harm Prevention 

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Financial counsellors applaud the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) for imposing the largest penalty ever given a fine of $2.5 million on Sportsbet. This is a media release from Financial Counselling Australia. It was originally published on 10th February, 2022. The betting company will also refund customers $1.2 million after an extensive ACMA investigation found it had…

Read More FCA welcomes tough stance by ACMA on unlawful spamming by Sportsbet

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Financial Counselling Australia (FCA), Financial Rights Legal Centre and the Consumer Action Law Centre welcome the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services’ recommendation for legislation to prohibit online gambling operators from accepting credit card funded deposits. This is a media release from the Financial Counselling Australia. It was originally published on 26th November, 2021. Yesterday the Committee released…

Read More Consumer advocates welcome recommendation for stricter controls of credit funded gambling online

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A new report by the Australian Banking Association (ABA) shows it’s time to immediately ban the use of credit cards for gambling. This is a Financial Counselling Australia Media Release The ABA has released the results of its consultation process about the use of credit cards for gambling. A survey conducted to inform the report…

Read More ABA report confirms credit card funded gambling doesn’t have community support

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Financial Counselling Australia welcomes the bill to establish the National Online Gambling Self-Exclusion Register. The Bill was introduced this week in Federal Parliament by the Minister for Communications, the Hon. Paul Fletcher.  The register means that people experiencing harm can press one button and self-exclude from all the online wagering companies. With that single trigger, the wagering operators…

Read More FCA Welcomes Gambling Self-Exclusion Register