Earlier this week, Australians have witnessed the end of online gambling in their country, or is it?
Well, all the major loopholes in the previous Interactive Gambling Bill are now closed and it will now be much more difficult or almost impossible to gamble securely online if you are residing in Australia. As we covered previously in the legislation saga for the Interactive Gambling Amendment Bill 2016, this has been going for quite some time now and the Senate has, this week, followed through what the House of Representatives started in 2016.
The Human Services Minister in Australia, Mr. Alan Tudge, introduced a new bill to review and amend the current Interactive Gambling Act back in November of 2016. Since then, the House Of Representatives have been debating this review introduction of which is intended to seal off any loop holes present in the Interactive Gambling Act 2001.
On the 8th of February this year (2017) the House Of Representatives have passed the amendment bill, then, the Senate followed and move through the amendment, meaning that from now one, all those online casinos and other online gambling portals that do not posses an Australian gambling licence and are offering gambling services will now be considered as illegal.
Despite all of this however, Senator David Leyonhjelm from the Liberal Democratic Party thinks that this whole situation is "stupid" and "ineffective". Here is what Mr. Leyonhjelm had to say to a local new service;
"If you want to gamble online, there are lots of opportunities in Australia at casinos and tournaments. It’s not as if there isn’t a great deal of poker playing already but they’re just stopping it online. The whole world is online now. The original 2001 law was meant to stop online gambling of many kinds but it didn’t as there was a loophole. There is quite an active online poker community in Australia. I don’t think it will succeed for those really determined. If you have a VPN or an offshore account, you will still play. It’s a stupid situation to be in."
Mr. Leyonhjelm continued by saying that;
"In the UK, there are licensed providers of in-play betting and the government taxes them. They raised hundreds of millions in revenues last year. They are also able to audit the betting to link sports events being rigged and correlate that back to activity to follow the money trail. The ban on in-play sports betting is meant to stop corruption of sport. If that happens now, we may never know."
"This will promote the black market, There are too many ways to circumvent these prohibition approaches. People will gamble using foreign providers by various means. They will be in the hands of sometimes shady providers and if they get ripped off they will have no recourse."
