Gambling age laws in Australia mostly peg age limit to 18 years. Like in Queensland, people under 18 are not allowed entry to any casino. In Tasmania, minors are described as those under the age of 18. Casino gambling in Australia functions under the Casino Control Act of 2006, adhering to strict guidelines regarding operation, permitting the legal gambling of table games like blackjack, roulette, baccarat, craps and poker.

Australia has more poker machines per person than any country in the world, excluding casino-tourism destinations like Macau and Monaco. It has nearly 200,000 machines – one for every 114 people.

This startling statistic resulted from a wave of pokie liberalisation during the 1990s that saw them introduced into pubs and clubs in every state and territory – except Western Australia.

To track the social impacts of this expansion, state and territory governments have commissioned surveys to measure the levels of gambling consumption and gambling-related harm. In total, more than 275,000 Australians have been interviewed in 42 studies of this kind since 1994.

We recently conducted an analysis of these studies to build a nationwide picture of how pokie gambling has changed across Australia over the past 25 years. We linked the participation rates reported by the surveys with government data on actual poker machine expenditure in pubs and clubs for each jurisdiction – converted into 2015 dollars to account for inflation.

The expenditure data exclude poker machines in casinos; these data are not disaggregated for government reporting purposes.

Consequently, the figures we present here should be considered minimums – especially in Tasmania and the Northern Territory, where a large proportion of pokies are located in casinos. WA is excluded from the expenditure analysis because it has no pokies outside Burswood Casino.

A recent gradual decline in pokie losses

Nationally, pokie losses in pubs and clubs increased fourfold between 1990 and 2000 before plateauing at around A$860 per adult per year in 2005. Since 2005, there has been a consistent gradual decline in gambling losses across the various jurisdictions. Throughout this period, pokie losses per adult in New South Wales have remained around 50% higher than the national average.

The biggest contributor to the decline since 2005 has been tobacco control, not gambling policy. The introduction of indoor smoking bans across Australia in the 2000s hit pokie revenues quite hard.

It is also likely that caps on pokie numbers – which have been relatively stable since 2000 – played a role in limiting pokie expenditure.

However, this should give no reason for complacency. The decline in pokie revenue is slowing, and possibly beginning to reverse in NSW, the NT and Queensland.

Current annual losses on pokies in pubs and clubs for Australia amount to $633 per adult. Losses in NSW are highest at $978 per adult and lowest in Tasmania at $283 per adult – although casinos play a more important role in Tasmania.

These figures are very high by world standards. The losses by Australians on pokies outside of casinos dwarf those of any other comparable country. They are 2.4 times greater than those of our nearest rival, Italy.

These losses are even more anomalous when compared to non-casino gambling machines in other English-speaking countries. Australians lose three times more than New Zealanders, 4.1 times more than Canadians, 6.4 times more than the Irish, 7.5 times more than the British, and 9.8 times more than Americans.

Falling numbers of pokie gamblers

The modest decline in losses since the mid-2000s has been driven by a falling number of people playing the pokies.

The chart below shows the proportion of the adult population in each Australian state or territory that gambles on pokies at least once per year. These proportions are derived from the surveys described above. Each survey estimate is represented by a single dot.

Participation rates peaked shortly after pokies were introduced in the late 1990s at around 40% for the larger states. Since that time, participation has consistently dropped to below 30% across Australia and has fallen to less than 20% in Tasmania, Victoria and the ACT.

Amounts lost per gambler have remained constant

Dividing the pokie losses in clubs and pubs for each jurisdiction by the number of actual gamblers reveals the average amount lost per pokie gambler per year as shown by the chart below. Some lines on this chart are shorter than others because the survey-based participation data is not uniformly available.

The reduction in total pokie losses since 2005 has not been matched by a corresponding decline in losses per individual gambler. After a reduction due to the smoking bans, losses per gambler appear to have plateaued – with some jurisdictions trending up (ACT and NT) and others down (NSW and SA).

This suggests that while fewer people are playing the pokies, the amount of money lost per gambler has remained relatively constant. And this amount appears very high.

The amount lost per pokie gambler (just in pubs and clubs) in both NSW and Victoria is around $3,500 per year, or around $65 per week. The ACT sits at around $3,000 per gambler per year, followed by the NT and Tasmania at around $1,500 per year.

To put this in some perspective, the average Australian adult spent $1,245 on electricity and gas in 2014-15.

And while we now have concerted government action to reduce energy costs, the regulatory reforms required to reduce the amount of losses for pokie gamblers are not on the legislative agenda in most of Australia.

Outside the US, particularly in Canada and Australia, the age limit for gambling almost always is set at 18 or 19. The same in Europe. Here are some of salient points of Canada's and Australia's gambling age laws.

When in Nova Scotia, Canada, young people from ages 18 and below are not allowed to participate in any gambling activity. They are not allowed inside gambling places and will be penalized when caught. In Ontario, the age limit for gambling is also 19 years and above. People 18 years and below are not allowed any participation in gambling.

Ontario also prohibits underage people from being seen inside casinos, regardless of who they're with—whether escorted by adults or parents. They are not allowed to work there either, unless they're exactly 18, at least. And Ontario laws on age limits are particular against advertising or promoting gambling to people under 19 years of age.

Some online casinos beguile players to first try their play money games where risks are not real. Later on, however, these casinos challenge or 'promote' upgrading of game level to eventually involve real money. This promotion is not allowed for the underage. In Quebec, the same age limit is observed. No one below 18 is allowed to even enter a casino. The same with Lottery or any gaming involving the purchase of tickets with a money stake.

Australia Casinos

Gambling age laws in Australia mostly peg age limit to 18 years. Like in Queensland, people under 18 are not allowed entry to any casino. In Tasmania, minors are described as those under the age of 18. Any kind of gambling in any place is illegal for them. In fact, some casinos in Tasmania have voluntarily disallowed minors from being seen inside main gambling areas. They are, however, allowed in other minor non-gambling areas of the casino as long as they're accompanied by an adult.

In Victoria, people under 18 are also not allowed to gamble or enter any casino. At age 18 or 19 it is believed that most people already have the maturity to handle themselves well at gambling. Betting in brick or mortar venues is viewed more capable of being monitored and regulated compared to online gambling. Hence, gambling age laws in Canada and Australia set age limit at an early age.

Australia Gambling Age

What needs closer monitoring and regulating then, is online gambling. Industrialized countries, like Canada and Australia, with easier access to the Internet, seem in a stalemate regarding this issue.