When the prime minister got up in question time last month to answer a query from Independent MP Zali Steggall about protecting children from gambling harm, he gave an answer that mystified experts and advocates.

After saying his government had done more to act against harmful gambling than any other Australian government, Anthony Albanese surprisingly brought lotteries into the debate as part of his justification for avoiding a blanket ban on gambling advertising.

“We know, when we look at where the harmful gambling comes from, that almost 70 per cent of that harmful gambling is actually poker machines,” he said.

“More than or around 15 per cent, off the top of my head — it’s about that figure — comes from lotteries and lotto and those tickets as well.

“I’m yet to see anyone stand up in this place and advocate banning completely all advertising of lottery and lotto tickets.”

The MPs who’d sat on the parliamentary inquiry into online betting harms, chaired by the late Labor MP Peta Murphy, must’ve been tearing their hair out at the level of debate.

For months they had gathered and weighed the evidence, rejecting the industry’s talking points as they went about doing their best to find the right policies that would minimise harm to gambling addicts and their families.

The cross-party committee had unanimously recommended a ban on all gambling advertising among 30 other proposals, including banning inducements and setting up a national regulator, and now the prime minister was talking about lotto.

Those committee members would be forgiven for thinking the prime minister had not read their report, You Win Some, You Lose More.

Where did the figures come from?

Samanatha Thomas, who is a professor in public health at Deakin University and has been researching gambling harms and advertising for over a decade, found the prime minister’s comments disappointing and suspected they originated from the vested interests fighting the ban.

“A number of us looked for those figures immediately and weren’t able to identify them from any public identifiable source,” she says.

Professor Thomas, who has published widely on the harms gambling advertising has caused in normalising betting to children, sought more information.

“I wrote to the Department of Communications asking for clarification of where the figures came from and I received no response,” she says.

The figures also troubled Independent Senator for the ACT David Pocock, who was concerned the prime minister was getting too much of his information from vested interests rather than experts.

This week the former Wallaby captain successfully moved a motion in the senate calling on the prime minister to produce any documents that backed up his claims about the harm caused by lotteries.

On Thursday morning, the acting prime minister Richard Marles responded saying: “I am advised the Prime Minister was relying on a recollection of published material and that there are no documents or material in the possession of the Prime Minister or his office.”

Senator Pocock was less than impressed.

“It is concerning that the prime minister has claimed to have been ‘relying on a recollection of published material’ when experts I have consulted say no such published material exists,” he said.

What that “published material” is, about the comparative harms of the scratchies and the Wednesday night Lotto draw compared to the business practices of the sports betting industry, remains a mystery.

However, Senator Pocock believes the figures quoted by the prime minister are remarkably similar to those made by Peter V’landys, one of the most powerful sporting administrators in the country and a man Mr Albanese invited to a White House state dinner with President Biden in October last year.

“The only other place the figures cited by the prime minister have been referenced are in comments by Peter V’landys, a person who runs two organisations that profit heavily from gambling and who is fighting against a ban on gambling ads,” Senator Pocock said.

In an article published in the Nine newspapers Mr V’landys, who is the chair of the Australian Rugby League Commission and chief executive of NSW Racing, praised the Albanese government for looking at the facts rather than what he called “loud voices who are expounding an ideology” around the issue of gambling advertising.

According to the article, “V’landys argued that independent statistics showed that out of 100 people who sought help from a problem gambling hotline, 70 were due to poker machines, 15 due to lotteries, eight due to racing, four due to sport and three due to casinos.”

The ABC contacted the NRL’s media unit to ask where these so-called independent figures came from. Mr V’landys did not respond.

There’s another curious aspect to this whole debate around the supposed harms of lotteries. The minister responsible for bringing in any form of advertising ban last year has previously dismissed concerns around this popular form of gambling, putting herself at odds with the prime minister’s subsequent comments in parliament.

When the Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland introduced a credit card ban on online gambling in April last year, she rejected concerns about the relative harms of lotteries, exempting them from the ban because, as she put it, they were “low risk”.

When the Australian Gambling Statistics (AGS) for 2022/23 were released last month the official government figures showed that lottery expenditure was less than half of the net losses from wagering.

The AGS data showed that Australians lost $31.5 billion from gambling that year — the highest per capita in the world. Of that figure that $15.8 billion was from pokies, $8.4 billion from wagering (legal betting on sports, racing and other approved events), while expenditure on lotteries was $3.1 billion.

While the AGS figures measure losses across the country, not harm, you don’t tend to hear stories of gambling induced misery tied to lotteries.

Stories of gambling related fraud, like that experienced by the Gurney brothers, who told 7.30 they lost close to $10 million from their family business stolen by an addicted gambler, tend to be linked to wagering or poker machines not lottery ticket purchases.

Stories of gambling related suicide, like that experienced by “Kate”, who told Radio National Breakfast her brother was “hounded to death” by betting agencies after he had self-excluded from gambling, once again tend not to be linked to lotteries.

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Unsourced stats have been used before

This is not the first time that unsourced statistics have entered the public debate over how the Albanese government should respond to the parliamentary report into online betting harms which was handed down over 15 months ago.

Kai Cantwell, the chief executive of Responsible Wagering Australia (RWA), a lobby group that represents six of Australia’s largest betting firms, told Radio National Breakfast that any blanket advertising ban in the online space would risk “driving Australian consumers to illegal off-shore providers”.

Mr Cantwell claimed that in Norway “the illegal offshore market is now 66 per cent of the entire market”.

When Radio National Breakfast followed up with RWA asking for a source for these figures, none was provided.

Stein Langberget, a special advisor on regulatory affairs at Norsk Tipping — Norway’s state-owned monopoly — said those figures were simply not true and that only 6 per cent of the market was currently offshore.

After writing to Michelle Rowland, Professor Thomas was able to secure a meeting with the minister and advocate why, based on her own research, she believes a blanket advertising ban will reduce harm to children. But she says it’s disappointing that the prime minister appears to be relying on information that is not based on verifiable statistics.

“Reform of the gambling industry is an issue which has national public interest at the moment,” she says.

“There is widespread community concern about the impact of saturated gambling industry advertising on children, and the prime minister has a responsibility to ensure that he is accurately representing the independent data about this issue.”

Professor Thomas’s views are backed up by Senator Pocock.

“As the leader of our nation, I would encourage the prime minister to quote verifiable facts on gambling harm as contained in the late Peta Murphy’s extremely well-researched, comprehensive report on gambling harm,” he says.

The figures in the latest AGS report are clear. Australia has a gambling problem. We are the biggest losers in the world and those losses continue to rise.

The prime minister might be right to say he has done more to tackle the issue than previous governments, but many in his own party room remain frustrated that he is yet to officially respond to the review conducted by their much-loved colleague.

For those inside Labor who want the prime minister to resist the power of the lobby groups, they will be hoping his rhetoric begins to sound more like Peta Murphy, less like Peter V’landys.