We have the public hearing on August 2 where the Committee asks us questions about our submissions and the final report needs to be handed down no later than the 14th of September.

I was told i'd be asked questions on August 1 fwiw so maybe it's multiple days?

I finally got around to reading the Clubs Australia submission today and it wa such an abomination I may have gone on a bit of a rant on their twitter page about their blatant hypocrisy. If anyone cares to join me they made a post about their efforts to stop online wagering. Care to fill it with stories about all of the people you know that are addicted to slots/pokies in Clubs Australia venues compared to the zero people you know that have lost their life savings to online poker?

I also told them we'd be happy to debate one of their representatives regarding online wagering compared to the harm caused by wagering in Clubs Australia venues, although there's zero chance they'll ever take us up on that

Pretty tempted to boycott Clubs Australia venues over their stance and at the very least I will ensure I never give them a dollar even in social gambling money in the future.

Good to see Betway make a submission as a UK company. Hoping to see submissions from Stars etc as well in there once they're all published i'm only seeing 11 so far and only 2 from individuals (one of which is mine). Last time I only saw about 3-4 from individuals and mine was never on the website and I think Marty Kozlov's was the only player whose submission I recognised despite knowing of a dozen or so who made them.

So Stars should be staying around til mid Sept at the worst and at the best the committee sides with us and looks to proceed to regulation. Is that an accurate assumption?

I have some good news. I just inquired about my submission to verify it had indeed been received and this was the response:

"Good afternoon xxxx,

Thank you for your email. I can confirm that your submission has been received.

We have received an unusually high volume of submissions for this particular inquiry, and each must be manually processed before being published on the public website.

Regards,"

Right, unless the committee makes their ruling earlier than the deadline which is 14 Sep. I have no idea if that's possible but I assume Stars won't be pulling out prior to the legislation being given assent anyway which takes a while. Either the committee agrees with us and with Sen. Leyonhjelm and co and we proceed to figuring out how best to regulate online poker in aus and online poker will be fine (I assume sites that have already pulled out like 888 will seek to re-enter the market as soon as they legally can), or we lose and then online poker will be banned whenever assent happens and we'll be down to Ignition/ACR/Unregulated chinese sites/etc. as our options.

Great that they describe it as an unusually high number of submissions as per prettyprettygoot's post - maybe the Stars email led to more recs than we expected making submissions. I hope so. Will be good to find out what the final number of submissions were (i'll make a point to ask this if possible and assuming it's not already known when speaking to the committee on Aug 1)

this gives me hope

So the Department of Social Services submission is four pages of nothing as far as I can tell... much the same for the College of Psychiatrists (though they include some subtle lobbying for research funding LOL).

Re submission 15

I guess I should be flattered that someone copied most of my submission but I'm a bit concerned that without any editing it may come across that we're not being genuine. I thought you (it must have been someone from here as it's the only place i posted it) could have at least dropped the sentence in the last paragraph where I'd said I'd taken hours writing it.

Link to DSS submission please

Number 4 on here: http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_...er/Submissions

^ ty

Ridiculous how slowly they're uploading submissions it's gone from 11 to 16 in a couple of days. I assume there are at least 50 submissions just based on the couple dozen I know about that aren't there yet and prob lots more

http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_...ublic_Hearings

Looks like the hearing is looking at 9 submissions on Tuesday.

Edit: found the schedule

Time Witness
9.00 am Australian Online Poker Alliance (Submission 2)
9.45 am Mr Mostafa Haidar (individual) (Submission 11)
Mr James Devine (individual) (Submission 13)
Mr Daniel Laidlaw (individual) (Submission 14)
10.30 am Break
10.40 am Department of Communications and the Arts (via teleconference)
11.15 am Mr Oliver Gill Gaber (via teleconference) (individual) (Submission 10)
11.50 am The Salvation Army Australia (Submission 6)
12.30 pm Australian Taxpayers' Alliance and MyChoice Australia (Submission 12)
Mr Satyajeet Marar, Director, MyChoice Australia
Mr Tim Andrews, Executive Director, Australian Taxpayers' Alliance
1.10 pm Lunch
2.00 pm Mr Luke Brabin
2.40 pm Professor Brian Alspach (individual)
3.20 pm Dr Sally Gainsbury and Professor Alex Blaszczynski (Submission 3)
4.00 pm Department of Social Services (Submission 4)
4.30 pm Adjournment

Looks like the Salvation army is anti-online poker (surprise surprise from the religious pushing their views on others) and cite gainsbury repeatedly when it suits them, noting that the conclusion that online poker should be regulated rather than banned and then promptly disregarding the conclusion and saying that online poker should be banned while using points from that same study to support their argument. lol, obv.

Luke's testimony should be interesting given he's the only person prosecuted/convicted under the IGA for running an online poker site.

Nice to see the AOPA up first to set the tone hopefully for the day (I assume Joey will be testifying as founder/leader of the AOPA?) and that the Australian Taxpayers Alliance is also going to be going up there and they're on our side. Looks like we have 3 poker players going in person early in the day too, Daniel Laidlaw who I know as well as Mostafa Haidar and James Devine (do either of you post in thread? can't put a name to a screenname for either)

I assume the whole day's proceedings won't be screened anywhere but I hope there's a stream or something, does anyone have any idea?

wait do they sit there and read/discuss every single submission made? if this is the case surely the "unusually high number of submissions" means that there is a very good chance this campaign will be successful? or am i being too optimistic?

My thoughts for those speakers lucky enough (or unlucky enough) to speak to the committee.

I know we all see the issues in the negative submissions, but does the committee? Will they see them after the hearing? They have their own axes to grind and may not see or know the issues. If they’re a committee member and mother, does sample size mean anything to them?

The committee is likely to be negative as well, and these negative submissions will be reinforcing what they already believe.

Unless somebody tries to refute or counter the points in the negative submissions, I can’t see how the report the committee produces is going to be in our favour.

The Australian Gambling Research Centre submission looked bad on the surface, but posters had the counter. If early, speakers can raise the issues and the counter, it could increase the pressure on the opponents of poker who speak later. For any of the mothers (or fathers) and they see the salvos submission, there is no way that they’re going to see anything positive about allowing the regulation of online poker.

The committee members are our customer and we need to sell a product that they don’t want to buy.

Also, I can’t find the committee members, I was wondering what sort of people that are?

Note, some committee members are silly people. Check out this video, http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/natio...bad-behaviour/.

Hi all - I'm James Devine. Have been following this forum for a while and trying to do my part to help support the fight and now I've been called up to participate in the committee hearing (not sure if good or bad thing...) anyway I'm taking the day off work to be there to do my best to support the cause.

As background, poker is a hobby for me as I work full time so only get to play at night or on weekends. My plan is to express the positive impact that online poker has had on my life in the past few years. Not only do I enjoy playing the game as a recreational past time but I've also seen improvement in my understanding of mathematics and probability and also decision making capabilities (being able to use all available information and variables to come to the best possible decision). Aside from this poker has actually had a net positive financial impact for me - I want the committee to understand that as a casual recreational player I am still not losing any money overall from playing the game.

Aside from that, my stance is that I fully support the government for tackling issues like addiction however I think that online poker is disproportionally misrepresented and does not actually pose a significant risk for Australians. In fact I think that online poker actually offers a low financial risk alternative form of entertainment compared to other gambling options available within Australia and is also a great mentally stimulating hobby.

I also commend organisations like the Salvation Army for trying to do their part for Australians that might be suffering from gambling addiction but I think their view is skewed because due to the nature of their work they will always see a disproportionate amount of people that are suffering from addiction compared to the actual true population of poker players, whom the vast majority are just enjoying the game on a recreational basis with absolutely no negative impacts to their life.

Other than that I will be simply looking to provide the committee with my personal experiences with online poker and the few friends that I have that have also had net positive experiences with the game.

Happy to get feedback from everyone in the forum here before Tuesday. I've reached out to Joseph as well through email and am also keen to meet up with anyone that is also attending the committee hearing on Tuesday.

James

Everything you've said is pretty ideal, best of luck dude

Agreed. Just be yourself James, you will be great!

Just started reading through the SA submission and came to this early on in it;

"Not all people who engage in gambling go on to become problem gamblers;..."

Maybe someone should counter with "Not all Salvation Army members go on to sexually abuse children;..." and see if they feel their organisation should be banned as well using that logic.

For reference, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-1...-finds/7835784

Salvos submission is dodgy. Samuel Pho (Lieut. Colonel) just makes stuff up, and then links to a study that links to a reference. When you read the study, it comes to the opposite conclusion to his statement.

E.g. 3. Pho said: ".. a small proportion are considered problem gamblers and are characterised by a preoccupation with gambling, difficulties in limiting their behaviour and disrupting important relationships and other activities..", and then references the "Chasing losses in online poker and casino games: Characteristics and game play of Internet gamblers at risk of disordered gambling" report, that says "Internet casino players had a greater tendency to report chasing losses than poker players"

He references studies and surveys that are 10+ years old, or written in French, etc.

No more submissions uploaded in the past couple of days. If we are expecting a multiple of the 16 uploaded so far, how are they going to have completed the submission review ahead of the hearing on Wednesday?

Also, is the hearing open to the public (non-invitees)? I'm tempted to drop in if possible.

Pulling up factual inconsistencies is one thing but I would advise against anyone considering going in and attacking either a person or an organisation on the other side of the argument.

The main reasons for this are

1) Our argument is the correct and logical choice so we don't need to fight with dirt ("When they go low we go high").

2) Our whole point is that online poker and the people that play it are a net positive. Poker players are good people who deserve a fair go from the government. We don't want to do anything to convey the opposite message to this.

3) We are a very small community which literally has zero campaign funds. The last thing we want to do is get into a fight with large, funded entities. (I nearly had a heart attack when I saw some people had decided to call out Clubs Australia in public forums the other day!)

Before you go into your hearing just make sure you know what your main points are that you want to convey to the committee. Focus on those and don't get distracted by white noise.

When we set up the AOPA in December this issue was dead in the water and everyone had said we had lost.

We have gotten to where we are today not through smear and attacks. All we have done between now and then is use strong, positive, factual messaging showing that we have the up most respect for both sides of the argument but that our point of view is correct.

Keep your eye on the prize and don't get side tracked by what others are doing. We are so close!

Joey, how confident are you that the committee members are clear of the differences in poker vs pokies? If we believe it's important to educate the committee members of the differences, how should the presenters deliver this message without calling out the destructive nature of pokies?

Good luck to all the people who are appearing before the committee. Kick it SwoopAE!