State governments traditionally regulate gambling in Australia. They tend to work closely with “industry” to promote gambling’s benefits, as they see them.

These benefits include revenue for cash-strapped state treasuries (about $5.75 billion a year, $3.5 billion of it from pokies), glitzy tourist attractions (even if most of the money lost comes from locals), and happy gambling-business operators.

The downside – significant harm to gamblers and their families, friends and others – tends to be downplayed. Recent reports funded by the Victorian Responsible Gambling Foundation, an arms-length government agency, puts the scale of gambling harm at about the same order of magnitude as the harms of alcohol.

A lack of effective policy from state governments is why Nick Xenophon, and others like Andrew Wilkie and the Greens, have looked to the federal government to reform Australia’s gambling environment.

But the powerful forces arrayed against reform have kept it off the table since Gillard’s backdown.