The public debate about gambling harm usually begins with warnings, advertising, self-exclusion and personal responsibility. Those are important issues, but they do not fully capture the problem. Some gambling products are not merely risky entertainments. Poker machines, online wagering platforms and other high-intensity products are engineered environments, built around repetition, sensory engagement, speed, immersion and repeated invitations to continue. For some neurodivergent people, especially people with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and some autistic people, those environments may interact with disability-related traits in ways that make harm foreseeable.

This is not to suggest that all neurodivergent people are vulnerable to gambling harm. They are not. Nor should neurodivergent adults be excluded from ordinary recreational life. The point is more precise: where gambling products are designed around rapid reward cues, sensory intensity and difficulty disengaging, some neurodivergent consumers face a materially different risk profile. Public policy should recognise that difference.

From consumer protection to disability risk

Recent GambleAware-commissioned research found strong links between neurodivergence and gambling harm, particularly for people with ADHD or autism. A related evidence review noted that gambling treatment, support and messaging are still largely designed around neurotypical users.

The mechanism is not mysterious. ADHD may involve impulsivity, heightened reward sensitivity, novelty-seeking, difficulty with inhibition and problems with delayed consequences. Some autistic people may experience sensory sensitivity, hyperfocus, repetitive behavioural patterns, anxiety, social isolation or difficulty disengaging from absorbing systems. These are not personal failings. But they may become relevant where gambling environments are designed around precisely those pressure points.

Poker machines illustrate the problem sharply. They use light, sound, rhythm, near misses, rapid reward cycles and intermittent reinforcement. Online gambling compounds the risk by removing many traditional frictions: travel to a venue, physical cash, opening hours, social visibility and the need to leave home. Gambling becomes private, continuous and available through a device already embedded in daily life.

The Australian Gambling Research Centre reported in 2025 that 87 per cent of surveyed regular pokies gamblers were experiencing harm. That does not prove a neurodivergence-specific causal pathway, but it does underline the broader point: high-intensity gambling products require stronger, earlier and more design-focused regulation.

Current reforms are necessary, but incomplete

Australia has not ignored gambling harm. The Interactive Gambling Act 2001 (Cth) regulates online gambling and prohibits certain services, including online casinos, in-play sports betting and unlicensed sports betting services. The National Consumer Protection Framework for Online Wagering includes customer verification, staff training, activity statements, deposit limits and BetStop, the National Self-Exclusion Register.

The Commonwealth has now announced a further 2026 gambling reform package. The package includes restrictions on wagering advertising, a ban during live sports and in sports venues, stronger enforcement against illegal gambling services, strengthening BetStop, action on harmful and emerging online lottery products, consistent match-fixing offences, expanded financial counselling and public awareness measures. Legislation is to be developed, with reforms to begin from 1 January 2027.

These measures are welcome. They should reduce some forms of exposure, especially for children and young people. But they remain largely within a consumer-protection and public-health frame. They assume that consumers can process warnings, set limits, resist inducements, self-exclude and disengage before serious harm occurs. That model is fragile even for neurotypical consumers. It is especially weak where the relevant vulnerability is connected to disability-related impulsivity, sensory capture, hyperfocus or difficulty interrupting a reward loop.

The government’s formal response to the Murphy inquiry also leaves significant questions unresolved. The 2023 report, You win some, you lose more, recommended a comprehensive national strategy, national regulation, a national online gambling regulator, an ombudsman, a harm-reduction levy, stronger data collection and a phased comprehensive ban on online gambling advertising. The government response has been criticised for stopping short of those measures, particularly the national regulator and full advertising ban.

The missing disability discrimination lens

General consumer law is too narrow for this problem. The Australian Consumer Law prohibits misleading conduct and unconscionable conduct, and the ACCC recognises that unconscionability may include knowingly targeting consumers experiencing vulnerability. But unconscionability is reactive, case-specific and difficult to prove. It asks whether a business behaved badly enough in a particular case. It does not adequately ask whether the product architecture itself foreseeably disadvantages a protected class of consumers.

Disability discrimination law offers another way of understanding these risks. The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) defines disability broadly, including disorders affecting thought processes, emotions or judgment, and behaviour that is a symptom or manifestation of disability. Section 24 makes it unlawful for a person providing goods, services or facilities to discriminate on the ground of disability in the terms, conditions or manner of service provision. Gambling venues, clubs, casinos, wagering operators and online platforms plainly provide services.

This changes the question. The issue is not only whether a gambling operator displayed a warning or offered self-exclusion. The issue is whether the service is designed and delivered in a manner that foreseeably disadvantages people with disabilities. A poker-machine room filled with sound, light, rapid play and near-miss effects may be formally open to everyone. An online platform using push notifications, inducements, live odds and rapid deposits may be offered on the same terms to every user. But formal equality does not answer the discrimination question.

The Australian Human Rights Commission has argued that the Disability Discrimination Act should be modernised, including through a positive duty to prevent discrimination before it occurs. That matters here. A complaint-driven model is poorly suited to gambling harm. A harmed person may be ashamed, indebted, distressed, undiagnosed, unwilling to disclose neurodivergence, or unaware that a discrimination argument exists.

What should happen next

The first step is Commonwealth action. In the 2026 gambling legislation, the Commonwealth should recognise neurodivergent consumers as a foreseeable risk group in high-intensity gambling. This would not require excluding anyone. It would require operators and regulators to consider how product design, advertising, inducements, frictionless payments and disengagement barriers affect people differently.

Secondly, the Commonwealth should use the current Disability Discrimination Act reform process to introduce a positive duty on service providers to take reasonable steps to prevent disability discrimination. That duty should expressly apply to digital services and high-risk commercial environments. It should shift the law from after-the-event complaint handling toward prevention.

Thirdly, Commonwealth, state and territory governments should develop a disability standard or code for gambling services within two years. It should address sensory intensity, speed of play, near-miss architecture, inducements, payment friction, session breaks, accessible self-exclusion, behavioural risk detection and neurodivergence-sensitive interventions.

Fourthly, states and territories should apply the same approach to land-based gambling, especially poker machines. State regulators should require disability impact assessments for gaming-machine approvals, venue licensing and harm-minimisation codes. Immediate priorities should include operating hours, load-up limits, enforced breaks and machine design features that intensify repetitive play.

Finally, regulators should require operators to use behavioural data for harm prevention, not merely customer retention. Online providers can detect rapid deposits, late-night play, chasing losses, escalating spend and repeated failed attempts to stop. If data can identify a valuable customer, it can also identify a vulnerable one.

Government must also confront its own conflict of interest. The state licenses gambling, taxes gambling, relies on gambling revenue and then funds partial harm-reduction responses from the proceeds. Official Australian Gambling Statistics record expenditure, turnover and government revenue across products and jurisdictions. That fiscal relationship does not invalidate reform, but it does demand greater transparency and stronger safeguards.

The necessary reform is not prohibition. It is accountability. Consumer law sees the gambler as a buyer who needs better information. Disability discrimination law recognises the neurodivergent gambler as a rights-bearing person who may be harmed by how the service is designed and delivered. That is a shift Australian gambling reform should now begin to consider.

Professor Michael Stuckey is a legal academic and governance practitioner with senior leadership experience in Australian higher education and public law. His work focuses on institutional design, administrative justice and integrity frameworks, with particular interest in how statutory powers operate in practice and how oversight settings can strengthen public confidence. He has held senior academic and governance roles, and has published and spoken on questions of law, regulatory design and public administration.

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