Yahoo Finance Mandatory cashless cards coming for Aussie gamblers
Cashless debit cards will be introduced in New South Wales to crack down on gambling, Premier Dominic Perrottet has announced.
The card is part of a strategy to target money laundering in the state, as well as helping limit how much money gamblers are spending.
Perrottet said NSW had been “profiting off people’s misery” for too long and something needed to be done.
Also read: Worse than Las Vegas: Australia’s $24bn gambling addiction
Also read: Surprise reason Aussies lost over $2 billion in 2021
“This is not a matter of if we do it, it’s a matter of how we do it,” Perrottet said.
“We need to change. This is not about working against each other, it’s about working with each other to effect meaningful change to improve people’s lives across our state.”
Gambling crackdown
The move comes after the Federal Government introduced new gambling slogans to replace the “gamble responsibly” tagline.
From March 2023, betting companies like Ladbrokes, Sportsbet and TAB must ditch the well-known slogan in favour of seven new and government-approved lines.
The new mottos include "Chances are you're about to lose", "You win some. You lose more", "What's gambling really costing you?" and "What are you really gambling with?"
When on screen, they must accompany information about gambling addiction resources and appear in the largest font possible to take up a third of the on-screen space. If the taglines are spoken, they have to be read slowly and calmly.
Gambling in Australia is a major problem, and it is surprisingly difficult to find out just how much money Aussies are losing each year. However, estimates suggest Australians lost around $25 billion on legal forms of gambling in 2018/19, representing the largest per-capita losses in the world.
The population of Australia is around 25 million people, which equates to a yearly loss of around $1,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.
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