Gov is crushing when u play pokies/live. When u play stars gov gets nothing. Why not get the gov to work with stars you say? Unfortunately politicians dont actually want to make changes for the better, they just want to say words people like so they can keep their jobs for as long as possible...

Poker getting banned was effectively a misclick from the keyboard mashing govwhale

govt doesn't want pro poker players. they dont want you grinding 0.25 45 mans on stars. they rather you lose at pokies.

I'm not sure reinstating poker can ever be seen as a change for the better.
Should it have been banned in the first place no. When you look at all the other bills in parliament that have direct effects on people's health, wellbeing or infrastructure, poker is not doing any of that. This is why its going to be so hard for it be reinstated in Australia.

What it should be is a blanket ban everywhere on all forms of gambling or no bans.

Australia needs prime minsters like john howard again to make australia great again. atm australia is in deep ****.

So I still don't understand two things:
1. Where does one go to get a license for, say, a casino?
2. Why did live spotsbetting get the attention and need for the ban?

1) The devil
2) God

Even if it comes back it won't be the same, we can only play vs aus players.. the traffic will be so low its hardly worth playing and no more russian donks

That isn't what is being talked about at all though? Every time it is talked about, it is with reference to the model the UK uses.

Nobody is talking about segregated markets. The politicians at the committee specifically spoke about the global market and we all explained to them why the segregated markets don't work and they agreed. You can read the transcripts of the senate hearing somewhere we were basically live-posting during it in this thread 20 odd pages back

We pushed the UK model hard during the senate hearings etc and that was all that was being spoken about by all senators from all of the political parties etc

THERE HAS BEEN NO TALK OF SEGREGATED MARKETS IF LEGISLATION PASSES IT WILL BE A GLOBAL MARKET YOU CAN PLAY RUSSIAN FISH ON STARS ETC IF WE SUCCEED

I can't make it any clearer than that, unless something changes we are not talking segregated markets. Yes, it is possible that could change but at this point we have had no indication from any parties that segregated markets would be considered and we even explicitly explained why they were less successful than the UK model with a global market during the Senate hearings and nobody offered an alternative viewpoint

One of my friends is at a Queensland LNP communications policy meeting this week and he is going to table a letter to Fifield (the minister who can make this happen) about the Queensland lnp's position advocating for legal online poker which has already passed their committee and they will be asking Fifield to consider legislating online poker ASAP. When that is done, I believe the time will have come for us to start writing to Fifield in support of that position. Our goal is to get this passed before the election and it is possible if we all put the work in when the time comes.

edit: I just spoke with Joey. He is still active in leading our cause within the LNP and as head of the AOPA and he said he will try and post an update tomorrow for everyone.

ahh cool thats good news then

Basically what needs to happen at the next election is Coalition to win convincingly in the lower house and only need the support of One Nation, Bernadi, Leyonhjelm and Anning and not have to rely on Xenophon in the Senate.

Having to rely on Xenophon to pass much of Turnbull's agenda was a huge sticking point in all of this as it was one of the reasons why the party went so left under Turnbull and why Morrison needs to drag it right again which I think Morrison understands.

Obviously if it was a member in the right faction of the Liberal party such as Dutton who was leader this would be a lot easier but I think Morrison knows where the true force of the party is that he needs to appease and he is much more centre right than centre as Turnbull was.

A convincing Coalition win at the next election is a pipe dream, they are going to get crushed.

Dutton and Morrison purport to be social conservatives so I don't think either would be much help. The reality is that they only care about what's going to win votes and they'd view this as an issue that is more trouble than its worth.

Probably best chance of anything getting through is if they concede that next election is finished and are just trying to get as much stuff through as possible. Again a lot would depend on the influence of social conservatives and others who hate betting on the net. My tip is a lot more are going to be unhappy about a bill legalising online poker than happy about. The LNP talk a big game about free markets and ideology but it is mostly bull**** and they are captured by vested interests that would more likely than not be opposed to legalisation of online poker.

Hey guys,

Just wanted to come in and write something.

Apologies I have been a little bit quiet of late, there has been a lot of work happening but it has all been background stuff where we deliberately haven't needed a lot of noise. Noise is often good, like when we first started to build momentum. But at other times it is bad as it invigorates your opponents to mobilise.

You guys are certainly deserving of an update though so I will share as much as I can with you especially into some of the questions I have seen coming up.

We are still working very strongly towards getting good legislation through and I am confident this will occur. The Minister is extremely comfortable with our position and agrees with the point we have made.

The new Prime Minister, Scott Morrison is someone I personally have a lot of time for. I have spent a bit of time with him on other campaigns and he is probably the best thing that we could have asked for as a leader. Whilst he personally is not supportive of poker he is a true Liberal in a sense that he does not believe that we should be telling people how to live. I have always had him listed as a supporter of our cause and that reigns true to this day.

Somebody asked earlier if you could make any difference by joining the Liberal Party. As someone who is a member and an elected politician for the Liberal Party I will say the answer is YES definitely. To be honest, it doesn't matter what party you support - you can always instill more change from inside your party of choice than you can from the outside. Look at it this way, when you vote in your election for a Federal Member there are generally 100,000 people voting. You are one of those 100,000 people, which is pretty small.

Tonight, I am going to preselection for the seat of Wentworth (Malcolm Turnbull's former seat). Whoever we vote for tonight will have an extremely good chance of becoming a member of Federal Parliament. There are eight candidates running and I have asked all of them for their position on supporting online poker. I am only one of 200 people allowed to vote tonight - which means my vote in the preselection as one of 200 is a lot more valuable than it is in a general election. Also, there are only 199 other people I need to talk to if I want them to support a pro online poker candidate as opposed to another 99,999. I will only vote for a candidate that commits to bringing back online poker.

For that reason, if you want to make change it is a lot more important to do it from inside a party not from outside your voice can be heard much louder and much clearer in that way. If anyone wants to discuss this more feel free to send me a private message.

That rant aside :-) things are going well with our campaign. I was confident that we would see something by the end of the year and I still am. This current sitting period is about setting out the calendar for the rest of the year. We have online poker in the mix to get in there, we are just working out when is the most effective time.

I hope that this helps, if you have any specific questions for me let me know. I will do my best to keep this thread more informed with what is happening.

Thanks

Joseph Del Duca
Founder
Australian Online Poker Alliance

I'll tell you one thing though where I think you are insinuating that it is really the big casinos and bookmakers that have the ear of the Liberal party and that will stall any return of poker however much it will be regulated is that we also need the economy to keep going the way it is going as more disposable income for everyone the less the bookies and casinos will be fighting over it and which could allow a return of this other form of gambling which when we look at it makes up a very small % of the overall gambling market.

Stars pay tax in the UK. If we followed their gambling laws for poker which is roughly whats being proposed, the Australian government would receive revenue on the Australian business portion for any offshore site that wanted a license whether that's Stars or Party or Crown starting their own site or whatever else. For what it's worth Stars bought Crownbet (it got rebranded to beteasy), so they clearly have a good working relationship with Crown.

Great news that Joey thinks it is likely we will see a bill put forward with LNP support before the election, sure, it's not a lock, and anything can happen, but a positive update is a positive update and Joey is in a good place to get this done as a politically active member of the LNP and if he is confident it happens, I am confident it happens and if he tells us we need to apply public pressure we should do that, and if he says we should sit tight and wait we should do that. If the conservative crossbench holds together we have the numbers for it to pass, and that's assuming it doesn't attract bipartisan support which it could as it's sensible legislation and Labor could use the revenue too.

For what it's worth I have heard directly from Crown poker room management they are neutral on online poker returning and if anything think it's a slight positive as it allows satellites into their big live events. Crown have no intention to take sides politically though in the online poker fight. Remember even for Crown Poker which is the biggest live poker room in Australia by a decent margin, poker is a tiny percentage of their overall revenue and is largely irrelevant to them as a casino operator either way. They have no incentive to try and keep online poker banned, James Packer is not Sheldon Adelson.

There is no way the Xenophon party (known as Centre Alliance now that Nick is no longer in the Senate) is going to vote for a bill that legalises any form of gambling.

If an election is held this year and the LNP are returned with clearer margin (as unlikely as that seems at the moment), we are looking at a best case scenario with the Senate to remain the same till the middle of next year when the Senators who lost their place from the last election are gone of about an August or September date in 2019.

I'm not going to comment too much on the political scene but all this goes to show is this country is in a much better state when it is a 3 party system (Labor, Greens and Liberal/National) with a couple of independants than what it has become which is about a 7-8 party political system with 5-6 of them conservative parties which is dividing the conservative vote and putting out there all sorts of conservative ideologies rather than just the consolidated ones. I concede that this is just a product of democracy but it makes it hard for things such as legalising poker that any conservative ought to be for to get through. But we go on...

Thanks Joey

Bundy, if the conservative crossbench holds together it is a majority without ex-Xenophon centre alliance or the greens once you add Hinch who is pro online poker. It's a no room for error majority, but a majority nonetheless. That's also assuming the bill doesn't have bipartisan support when it eventuates which is possible.

I'm honestly just going to start writing politicians again myself, I don't care if it's not organised and doesn't go anywhere.

I felt that there was a natural momentum leading up to the Senate hearing when the outrage/anger from actually losing poker was still raw, that is all completely cold now. I feel like a huge number of semi engaged poker people have now just moved on with their lives and found something else to do, and those are numbers (and for politicans, votes) we'll never get back on our side.

I'm going to just start pestering elected officials about this for the rest of my life

what about the children? andy_mcleod is 16 winning more money than most 30 year olds. can't have that. its just not fair. at all.

Hey guys,

Just so you know I have a few meetings booked in over the next couple of days and will provide an update for you all after that.

Although, start getting ready to dust off your dancing shoes!

Good stuff Joey! Looking forward to the news

Negreanu also talked about the aussie market on DAT poker podcast, episode 2. He seemed very happy with the progress and reiterated how big of a market Australia is and was pretty confident good news is coming

Thanks for the updates, keep fighting the good fight and let us know what if anything we can do.

I've learnt this brand new dance move just for you.

Also even if I dust my shoes off and they redust I can always dust them off again later cause you're doing gods work no matter the result.