Program Item Details
TITLE: Dr. Jan McMillen, Australian National University, Canberra
SUBJECT: #202 AGRI Conference: Solving Australia's Gambling Problems
SYNOPSIS: When it comes to the social and economic impacts of gambling, Alberta can learn a lot from Australia. Dr. Jan McMillen is using GIS mapping and mathematical algorithms to help identify solutions to her country’s gambling problems.
AUDIO: Download Audio (mp3 format)
TRANSCRIPT:
#202 May 30, 2006
Interview starts at 12:34
Intro: While Canadians are just developing a gambling culture with the recent influx of neighbourhood casinos and VLT’s, Australians have enjoyed legalized gambling for over 200 years. So where do these people from the southern hemisphere rate when it comes to assessing the positive and negative impacts of gambling? That’s was the focus of Dr. Jan McMillen’s presentation at the recent conference in Banff hosted by the Alberta Gaming Research Institute. Jan is a professor at the Australian National University and the director of the ANU Centre for Gambling Research. Jan says Australians gamble more than anyone else in the world, so I asked her why.
Jan McMillen
JM: Because it’s there. Alberta comes close. It’s the only place that comes anywhere near us. Albertan’s gamble about $800 per adult capita. We gamble about $1100-$1200. And we’ve have a very liberal gambling environment ever since white settlement. It hasn’t been prohibited in Australia like it has in a lot of other countries. And in fact, most of our gambling was run by governments. And the criteria was there should be no profiteering from gambling and that it should be for public benefit. And then in the 1970’s we lost the plot and commercialized. And that’s when the wave of expansion and the wave of gambling problems started to occur.
CC: NOW IN YOUR TALK YOU REFERRED SEVERAL TIMES TO A STUDY THAT WAS DONE BY THE PRODUCTIVITY COMMISSION. WHAT IS THE PRODUCTIVITY COMMISSION AND WHAT WAS THE MAIN FINDING OF THAT SUTDY?
JM: Okay, the Productivity Commission is our big national economic think tank. They’re mostly we think free marketers and what we call economic rationalists. They normally would be inclined to allowing the market to grow and be concerned about low taxation, that type of thing. And their findings from this study were quite different to anything else they’ve ever done.
And they basically came down to the major finding was the social costs of gambling were profound and hidden to a large part. And that in a lot of cases the social costs were outweighing the benefits. And importantly, they held the industry and governments responsible. And said the reason was policy failure and market failure. That governments were driven by the drive for revenue and taxation and the industry in terms of its profit-making were introducing what they considered to be improper practices. And so it was a wakeup call for both industry and government. And it caught everybody by surprise, I think.
CC: NOW ONE OF THE THINGS THAT CAME OUT OF THAT, YOU SUGGESTED, IS A NEW POLICY, A CONTAINMENT POLICY ON GAMBLING. WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT?
JM: Well, the States had to respond. I mean, they were being called to task. And so most of the States either explicitly or implicitly basically put a lid on their growth strategies. Until then, new gambling opportunities were being introduced rapidly. After the Productivity Commission report, basically people put a freeze on the introduction of new licenses and there was a general agreement that they should pause and take breath, and have a look at what the impacts were and have policy review to see how they could address the problems that quite rightly had been identified.
CC: NOW QUITE OFTEN PEOPLE HERE ARE LOOKING AT THE COSTS VERSUS THE BENEFITS. AND YOU’VE ACTUALLY TAKEN THAT A LITTLE BIT FURTHER. WHAT IS IT THAT AUSTRALIA IS DOING?
JM: Yes, we did try to do an economic calculation of the costs and benefits using conventional methodologies. We realized we’re never going to get an agreement on how to do that. The debates amongst economists could go on forever. And governments can’t wait. So they really decided what they’ve really got to do is basically involved the community more. We’re focusing on the concepts of harm and benefit, and letting the community have a say in how they define those terms. And we’re looking at the effects of gambling down at a very local level because we’ve found that the effects of gambling can differ widely from one community to another. Some communities seem to be very resilient and cope with a large range of gambling options without too much trouble. Other communities are really struggling and problems are acute. We want to know why and we want to involve the community in developing solutions.
CC: NOW YOU MENTIONED THAT YOU’RE LOOKING AT NEW WAYS TO DEFINE THE EFFECTS ON COMMUNITIES. AND YOU’RE USING THINGS LIKE GIS MAPPING AND MATHEMATICAL ALGORITHMS. WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO GET FROM THAT? HOW IS THAT GOING TO HELP YOU?
JM: Instead of just relying on plain economics, we’re moving to other disciplines. Health research and criminology have been using GIS mapping for years to understand and inform policing strategy and the allocation of health resources, to put health resources, hospital, ambulance services where there are areas of need, for instance. And this isn’t rocket science. It’s simply taking an existing methodology and we think putting it into another domain where it’s very much needed.
Up til now, we’re really been taking an aggregate approach to gambling problems. Sort of getting up in helicopter and looking down at broad panorama, when the impacts are localized. And what we’ve decided to do is we really need to get down to the local level and really understand what’s happening on the ground and understand where the local needs really lie. And GIS is great tool. That’s all it is, an analytical tool that will help us identify areas of need and help us to allocate the resources to those areas.
CC: ONE OF THE IDEAS THAT HAS COME UP AT THIS CONFERENCE IS THE IDEA OF TAKING A MORE HOLISTIC APPROACH TO LOOKING AT WHAT THE SOCIAL IMPACTS ARE. AND YOU SAID THAT WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT IN AUSTRALIA ARE THE FIVE CAPITALS. WHAT ARE THE FIVE CAPITALS? AND HOW WILL THEY HELP YOU?
JM: Well it’s a wellbeing approach. We really want communities to benefit from this. And in fact some of the legislation makes that mandatory. That gambling must be on balance of benefit. So it’s a wellbeing approach. It looks at human capital, social capital, economic capital, institutional capital to make sure the resources and organizational support is there, and natural capital as well, because some communities very well endowed in terms of natural resources. Other communities, particularly in inner urban areas or semi-industrial areas, there’s very little for people to do, and a club in an area like that really becomes the only game in town. And that community could be very vulnerable.
CC: WHAT LESSONS DO YOU THINK CANADA CAN LEARN FROM AUSTRALIA’S EXPERIENCE?
JM: Oh, not to make our mistakes. That’s the main thing. I thing we were a bit blaze about it because Australia has had legalized gambling for 200 years without acute problems. It was so legitimate and so well respected, everybody gambled. Then suddenly in the 1970’s and 1970’s, we lost the plot and communities started to hurt. It took us ten years to start to complain. So I think it is preventing those problems from occurring in the first place. Monitor the effects of gambling progressively and develop preventative programs so you don’t end up with the community as we did in Australian in 1999 where 90 percent of Australians who gamble said gambling was doing more harm than good. That’s not a positive response.
CC: THANK YOU VERY MUCH
JM: Thank you.
Dr. Jan McMillen is a Professor of Social Sciences at the Australian National University in Canberra and the Director of the ANU Centre for Gambling Research. She was speaking at a recent conference in Banff on the social and economic impacts of gambling. This was sponsored by the Alberta Gaming Research Institute.
FEATURED LINK: Alberta Gaming Research Institute
FEATURED LINK: ANU Centre for Gamblig Research