Turnbull just announced he's challenging abbott for leadership. Is probably a good sign.

What's his screen name?

abbots its budgiesmuggler not sure about turnbull

I wouldn't trust Channel 9 to get their reporting right on what the government is really targeting.

Not good news

http://calvinayre.com/2016/11/10/bus...g-legislation/

The same Grey/Black issue applies to the UK market and the UKGC

so what are the likeliest outcomes here?

as far as i understood, if this bill is passed, all the big operators (PS, 888, PP ...) will have to go. Like Richard said, it's not even important that they have a licence in NJ, since the UKGC has similar restrictions. and since the UK is a huge market, they don't have a hard decision to make

What's so bad about a little bit of pokers? Alan Tudge can **** right off?

heh, do when know when this bill will be passed/denied?

Friend of mine who is a LNP powerbroker (the ruling party proposing the bill) and poker player told me this is a key passage

"bill will prohibit a person providing regulated interactive gambling services to Australians unless the person holds a licence under the law of an Australian state or territory. This amendment will clarify the licensing requirements for interactive gambling services in Australia and will provide a simple to establish key criterion for enforcement agencies when investigating whether to take action against unlicensed services. It is expected that reputable gambling organisations will obtain a licence in Australia or cease providing illegal services."

So hopefully if this thing passes, it'll be along the lines of 'reputable sites can apply for an australian license and keep operating as long as they pay their licensing fees and taxes' similar to say UK

Could be worth contacting this guy to encourage him to take the path of regulation and freedom instead of any attempts to ban online poker

https://twitter.com/AlanTudgeMP

My LNP friend doesn't know the specific details of the proposal though but i've asked him to find out and keep me posted.

http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/...cfb7%2F0012%22

Looks like this is the speech transcript. If this is going forward we should probably organise some sort of lobbying on behalf of the online poker playing community to encourage them to take the path of license and regulate while remaining in a global player pool for online poker providers rather than ban. It seems like this is mostly targeting sportsbetting live in play betting, but without reading the actual bill I have no idea. The passage in my previous posts referencing

'It is expected that reputable gambling organisations will obtain a licence in Australia or cease providing illegal services.'

at least makes it sound like reputable operators should have a chance to obtain a license. As long as they don't go full ******, this could end up being fine even if something is passed, especially if it makes online poker operators able to operate explicitly legally in Australia rather than in a grey area. Obviously the status quo is great and it should be preserved if we can, but if anything happens hopefully it's licensing/regulation for operators rather than any sort of a ban.

as far as i understood, poker wasn't planned to be regulated and licenses were only for sportsbetting ... so thx for the link in the 2nd post

This is all secondhand info from a LNP powerbroker i'm personal friends with (i'm not a LNP supporter) he messaged me this morning when the news was broken to him. I've asked him to find out more if he can and let me know (he's pro online poker as he is a solid recreational player and next in line to be a MP in pretty much a seat of his choice in his local, although out of respect to his privacy I won't say which one - if he ends up in parliament he'll definitely be a friend of ours on this issue but he isn't yet, so won't have any say over this legislation)

I'm not sure of the specific details and he isn't either yet I don't think, I assume the full text of the bill should become public soon enough if it isn't already. I'm busy tonight so I can't search for it, but it's IGA 2016 that we're looking for

Maybe somebody can contact Tudge's office and ask for clarification one way or the other so we know what we're dealing with

Lol @ the amount of people who berated his twitter for sportssites banning winning punters in Australia.
Would love for this issue to be fixed. Even a 2k min bet would be great

This is the amendment introduced:
http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/...926cfc5f211%22

I see nothing about the IGA being widened to allow for other forms of online gambling. The existing 2011 law explicitly prohibits anything but certain forms of online sports betting and lottery ticket sale. This amendment strengthens this law and gives more enforcement powers. This follows a 2015 review that recommended these changes, and an announcement from the Government in April 2016 that they accepted all these recommendations and they would introduce such an amendment. The party itself has been explicit since 2013 that it did not support any relaxation of online gambling laws and would look to increase enforcement.

Back in 2012-2013, there was a study conducted that recommended relaxing the IGA to allow for online poker tournaments under licensing. There was some effort by the previous Government to adopt such a relaxation. But this is not supported by the current Government. [see the OP, that's when this thread was started]

Maybe i'm missing something, but i'm not seeing anything suggesting that this amendment will accompany a relaxation of the IGA. When it says "It is expected that reputable gambling organisations will obtain a licence in Australia or cease providing illegal services", i just read that to mean "license for sports betting", and licensees would have to stop other prohibited activities (online poker, casino games, in-play betting).

Thanks for the link. This is the key bit re the grey/black market:

Both NJ & UKGC are explicit that if they were to get such a letter they would demand that licenced firms stop serving Aus or lose their license.

This is just meant as a crackdown on overseas sportsbetting sites which has been lobbied for by the Australian bookies, they pay gambling taxes which the government collects so they work together for both their self interests.

Noone knows or cares about poker because it isn't taxed.

You better tell them that quick as this is what the act says now

My bold. Note that poker gets a mention even before the peculiar Aussie obsession with in-play.

So if we assume all legitimate companies quit oz market then who will that leave? will wpn, tiger, ipoker or microgaming still offer skins that service Australians? anyone care to guess.

I'm hoping Poker Asia Pacific comes back. Those game were mostly Australians and easily the softest games on the whole internetz. The software was kind of **** but that just kept the regs away

http://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_...unications/IGA

Submissions can be made here. It cant pass before the end of November.

Yeah, i'd like to see them forced to allow winners too although they would get sharper right now they're absurdly square because they just ban winners (i'm obv banned everywhere, but there's nothing stopping me from winners feeding their friends tips etc and rinse/repeat once they get banned etc.)

For what it's worth I did some work for Poker Asia Pacific when the site was open and to the best of my knowledge, the owner's plan is to reopen if the site if the is legally cleared to get a license etc. and resume from there. The site will only reopen if it's cleared to do so legally.

There were a lot of software improvements being worked on, low rake is good etc. but the ultimate position here should be if any legislation is passed, ensure all reputable sites (eg, not Lock, basically any site that operated a fair game and paid out withdrawals promptly etc) are allowed to apply for a license and operate while paying licensing fees/taxes/etc to the government while players themselves remain unaffected.

It's just leaving money on the table for the government not to offer licenses for online poker sites and collect tax revenue if the sites are willing to play ball, which they would be I assume if the alternative is exclusion from the market.

Maybe the government wants stuff like mandatory daily deposit limits in place or something i'm sure that's fine and something we can compromise on to protect people with gambling problems, I know some of the Australian sports betting sites have them. At the end of the day as long as we're allowed to play, and sites are allowed to get a license and operate and the taxes are operator side rather than player side, I don't see anything wrong with the legislation if that's the route it takes.

I personally think government regulated sports betting sites should be forced to accept bets (up to x limit anyway) from all Australians as well, as banning winners is obviously disgraceful, but that's an entirely separate issue and one that the sports betting community can handle

If they do go the route of proposing a ban, we should definitely organise some sort of a protest, and bombard members of parliament with calls about freedom etc.

Perhaps someone with a suitable background could put a submission together with what we as Australian poker players would like to see if this bill passes and we can as a community all send copies prior to the submissions deadline

it's early in the morning, so if i just don't get it, plz forgive me, but at least ipoker and microgaming must have a uk license?

So Unibet said just three days ago they had no plans to leave and would "tough it out" in Oz. That was before this legislation landed, but I don't think there's any text in there that's surprising. It was signaled six months ago. Unibet operate in the UK and it's a pretty important market for them; regulated markets in general is a focus. So I don't know what they're seeing that I'm not.