Australians are losing more money to gambling each year than the federal government spends on aged care and almost as much as it spends on the national disability insurance scheme, a new report has found.
The report by Equity Economics found that despite the cost-of-living crisis, the amount of money being lost to gambling has significantly increased. Expenditure on gambling has also risen faster than the cost of education, housing and inflation.
“There is a hidden, unspoken black hole in household budgets that government cost-of-living policies has failed to address,” the report said. “This black hole is gambling losses.
“Governments have responded swiftly in recent years to the cost-of-living crisis, but there had been a complete…
