The Chaser Report - Fighting Gambling With Gambling

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Charles and Dom set out to solve Australia's problem by betting on Australia's gambling problem. And if you'd like to win big, why not bet this solution will never see the light of day on Polymarket?---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Hello, Charles. It's one of those ones where I have no idea what you're going to talk about. I always enjoyed those ones. Yes, but we got an email a few days ago, I think it was over the weekend from a listener, who wondered us to tackle the question of gambling advertising. Oh, right?

And I noticed actually it sort of reared its ugly head. in the news again because one of the federal government ministers was quizzed about it the other night on like 730 or something. And I think there's a committee that's about to meet that's going to draw some conclusions about an inquiry that might be set up that might have some recommendations down the track for maybe doing something about gambling advertising at some point in the future but not quite yet or ever again. Right.

I think that was it. I can't quite, yeah, it was Sarah. Sarah was the person who said. Thank you, Sarah. Yes. And what she wanted, she said, you know, like, Charles, we really love the way that the podcast solves the world's problems. Thank you. Happy to be a service.

And why can't you, can you actually work out a way to solve gambling advertising, right? It's clearly a scourge on. And I think I might have actually come up with a solution to gambling. Because everyone, everyone knows that gambling advertising. increases gambling, which increases poverty and misery, and it rips all of the Australians of. How do we jiu-jitsu that into an elegant solution? Okay, let's look at this in a moment,

and I'll just note that you won't hear gambling ads in this ad break. Yes. We don't, because we've said to our publishers don't sell any ads at all for gambling. And, Charles, I think that's a really foolish decision that I want to take up. It is a terrible idea. Do we just say, Charles, do you want to make money out of this thing or not? Because the only people who buy ads in things now are gambling companies. You may as well, I mean, imagine every single time I watch any sport, any streaming platform,

you're guaranteed a gambling ad. These people have money. Yes, they've taken it from impoverished people who have no self-control. But I would like that. I would like money. But also not even impoverished people and people who previously weren't impoverished. Yes, that's true. It cuts across all classes.

Freshly, freshly impoverished people in many cases. Freshly impoverished. That's their main client. Freshly impoverished. I wonder whether you can sort of target ads at freshly impoverished people. You probably can. Anyway, so I think when you have a really thorny issue like this, which is it is clear that you definitely should do something in society,

it's very popular. Like there is absolutely nothing standing in the way of the government actually acting and doing something very popular that will increase their popularity, except for the fact that the people who you'd be doing it against are incredibly rich, right? Oh, that sounds a bit dangerous, Charles. Yeah, that's where the problem is. So you have to just sort of focus on that and go,

no, let's just admit it. Like, let's not be idealistic about how to solve this problem. Like, don't sort of go, oh, well, the government should do it because they should do it. You've got to actually appeal to the actual interests that are involved and sort of do that. So this is my thing here. It started off with the idea of what if you linked the amount of money that Australians gamble each year to politicians pay.

Oh. To go, look, it's absolutely your fault that we've got all these gambling losses because you're refusing to do anything about gambling advertising. Why don't we just make it that before you get paid each week, we subtract from that the amount that Australians have lost in gambling. Oh, wow. And very quickly, because they'd stop being paid, basically, they would sort of go, actually, you know what,

maybe I do want to be paid, maybe we should change gambling advertising so that, you know, people lose less money and we have to not pay it back as much. But then I thought, But the problem with that is that, I, who would pass that law? Well, it would be the politician. Like, it doesn't work. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And then the other problem is it's not nearly enough money. Like, the actual total sum for running Australia's parliament is, like, all the politicians paying and everything like that is ridiculously small compared to the amount of money that is lost in gambling each year. So it's literally, it's like 500 million to run parliament or something. And gambling losses is like $14. billion. Like, it just, it wouldn't, our politicians would end up not just newly impoverished,

but they'd be completely, you know, like, it just doesn't make sense, right? So then I was thinking, what if we set up a system whereby you have to, if you're a gambling company, you can bet in favour of the gambling company winning. Do you see what I mean? Like, so every time somebody places a bet on, I don't know, far less. or whoever the latest horse is, right? You can also, you can take out a bet that is linked to how much money the gambling company is going to make about that bet, right?

You see what I mean? So you're on the same side as the house, right? And the whole point is that everyone would start betting on that product rather than any of the other products, because all the other products lose money, and this one wins money. And you just make it a legal requirement that that's one of the bets that you can But wouldn't nobody bet on the other products at all and then the entire thing would fall over? Oh, no. Oh, yeah, you're right. Oh, what a terrible disaster that would be. Well, I mean, that's a very interesting idea, Charles.

But I have to confess that while you've been discussing this, I've got a, I've just been drawing up plans to a bit of a side venture, which is I, and look, I'm not trying to influence anything here. I know you've got an agenda here. You want to stop gambling advertising and I hear you. Yeah. I'm looking at a way I can take bets on whether anything will change ever. Yes, that's it. And I think I'd be pretty safe in saying that I... I mean, do you remember in the state election, one of the big issues that we had in New South Wales was Pocky's reform. And there's a lot of discussion about this.

And in fact, Dominic Perritte was quite keen to... Yeah, he was the lead. Yeah, yeah, the incumbent premier, he was keen to bring in all kinds of restrictions. they were going to remove cash, so just have an all being scanned so that there's a central monitoring system that identified problem gamblers and so on. And then Chris Minns, the new Premier,

if I recall, he said he'd do a trial of a cashless gaming card. He didn't want to jump into changing the system for everybody, wanted to do a trial. Have you had anything much about that trial, Charles, in the years of the Minns government? I haven't researched it. Well, I do remember that wasn't one of the problems

with the trial, that they're only going to do it on one one pokey. On, yes, remember that? And so the whole point is, you know, you go to an RSL and there'd be the trial pokey where it's got all these restrictions and it's all bureaucratic. And then the rest of the pokies were there. So the whole, I remember at the time when they set it up, the methodology was so stupid that it was like, but there's going to be no data at the end of this trial.

Oh, no, no, no, that's finished, Charles. I've done my research. Oh, okay. Let me tell you what happened. So what is the research? Tell us the results. Well, for those who want action in this space, the cashless gaming trial has recommended that the state government

implement a mandatory statewide account-based gaming system by 2028. So you would have, there's 30 recommendations in the report. It came out in December 2024. This report came out. It's been there for a while. And, yeah, that's what the idea was. And one little issue, a tiny little point. It was 3.4 million.

dollars it cost to do this trial. $3.4 million to do the research. 243 people signed up initially for the trial, of which do you know how many were genuine and active users, and I'm quoting here that had used the technology for at least two or more days? How many people actually used this technology

more than once, Charles, contributing their data? I don't know, a thousand? 14, 12, Charles. 14. 14, not 14,000, 14, 14, 14. 14 people.

So this is the independent panel on gaming reform, and their report said, and I quote, because of this reluctance from patrons to engage with the technology, well, they said, we've got to make it mandatory, but there should still be some limited amount of cash going on there. And a company called Three Arc Social did an evaluation of the report. And I wish I'd had that contract, Charles, because they just said, yeah, the very small sample size, A very small sample size, you can't draw statistically robust conclusions about the impact of the technology on users.

So the panel said it was a great success. Yes. And I'm not sure if anything's happened since the report landed. So if we'd bet on whether anything would happen, if I'd been allowed to set up my gambling company before that, I think it would have been very good for the house if anyone had bet it on change. The Chaser Report, news a few days after it happens. So what is the solution then? If you're saying that our political system cannot affect change,

that's something that's overwhelmingly bad for society and most of the population support change, you know what we should do? We should go to war. Go to war? Yeah. We're just distract from this issue. Can you bet on the outcome of the Iran war?

That's a very good question. I don't mind of flutter. It's been happening. This morning, you know how Trump backed out of bombing the thing yesterday or the day before whatever it was? You know, like one of his backflips, in the five minutes before he announced that he wasn't actually going to bomb all their power plans. There was huge activity on the stock exchange with these massive like $1.5 billion

positions that benefited greatly. as soon as it became apparent that five minutes later that he'd announced that he was backing out. Forget that, Charles. So, yes, you can easily bet on more. Yes, but you literally can. Anonymous gamblers, this is from the ABC, anonymous gamblers made millions of dollars betting on whether or not there'd be a strike. And people are saying, could this be inside information?

Oh, Pete Higgs here is up to negative. Don Jr. online bets correctly predicted the strikes anonymously on Polly Market and the Atlantic's op-head on it is simply entitled Maybe Turning War into a Casino was a bad idea I mean you'd say that Charles I think I think actually this is our whole way out of it We say to the government get rid of gambling advertising

But allow us to sort of gamble on the war Like that's the deal I mean I just think It's just too hard to regulate, Charles. Just too hard. Let's just, in the era of crypto and Polyma... Just ban social media for teens. Well, are they...

Hang on, are the teens banned from Polymarket? Because I don't be in favour of that. No, I wouldn't be in favour of that. No, I think Polymarket... Yes, OK, don't get the meta and what TikTok. But if they're not able to gamble their pocket money on whether there's a war or not, are they really free, Charles?

Are they really free? Well, what is freedom? I'm going to see if I can bet on. what freedom is on polymarket. Have you ever, is polymarket legal in Australia? I don't know, actually. I mean, I know it's sort of very big at the moment. This is the website that allows you to sort of bet on anything, isn't it?

Yeah. Oh, and the first question when you look it up in Google is, is polymarket legal in Australia? It's literally, and the answer is it is considered illegal. Yes, because ACMA found that they provided illegal and licensed, regulated, interactive gambling services. But I bet you, I bet you advertising it is not illegal. I bet you a minute. Don't you reckon?

But if ACMA, I mean, based on their success in regulating the Kyle and Jackie O's show, I think you'd be fine. You'd be fine. The Tax report's not endorsed betting on Polymarket. We just note that probably people have found a way to do it. It's so funny because I'm just gone to Polymarket for the first time ever. And it says, set up your wallet, right? And they're all like scammie, scam-scam-style wallets.

Like, it's all metam-mask. Trust wallet, phantom, rabbi wallet, OKX wallet. The City Monnet The City Morning Herald reports in the past week that Australians are flocking to Polymarket using VPN.

Yeah, right. Because you can't seem to actually get past the... You've got to set up a wallet before you can even browse Polymarket. Isn't that horrible? Simile. Simily. One user.

One user went on Polymarket and bet $32,000 US dollars on Maduro being removed, and they made $400,000 out of it. So here you go, here's the more detail. But the day before the strikes began, more than 150 accounts, mostly newly created. This is the Herald reporting in New York Times, by the way. They bet more than $850,000 saying there'll be a strike within 24 hours.

So, I mean, that's kind of a laydown as there, isn't it? Okay, I think what we should do is, we should get some inside info on the war, bear to a whole lot of money using that inside info, and then use it to pay our politicians. We say, how much you're taking from Sportsbet? We'll stop taking it from Sportspeak, give it to us and we'll increase it by $1 or whatever.

And then get them to stop doing the advertising. Is that it not? We gamble our way to funding the whole thing. No, there's a much better solution here. Charles. We just need to get into office so that we can bet on whether Australia will go to war with, I don't know, Nauru or something. Yes, yes.

And then declare war and make lots of money. That's... No, yes. We just cut out the middle. We don't have to be involved. We just say to Albo, Albo, if you're needing a whole lot of money for your elections, don't get it from sports bet and bet 365. Get it direct from them by placing bets on

decisions that you're making. They literally ring up Richard Miles Albo every morning. It's a great... It's a great way to fund Australia's defense expansion. Yes, we just fund our entire defense infrastructure. We can fund walk us this way. Yes. Yes.

Whether or not the submarines will arrive. Actually, I don't know if Polly Market would allow that. I think that it's a moon shot. Okay, well, Dom, I think we've, look, I think they're sufficiently sold. It's not even a moon shot because at least there is a moon. There is a moon. So I hope Sarah is satisfied with it. Sarah was also the listener who commented, who was so delighted by.

by the fact that Claude was so shit at lawyering. She said, she, remember, I was waxing lyrical by how good it was. And I think she must be a lawyer because she was going, oh, I was so delighted when it turned out to be completely illegal. They used a thing called Harvey, I think, is known after the lawyer in suits. Anyway, podcast at chaser.com.com. You've got a story idea for us. Otherwise, we'll catch you next time.

See, yeah.