I emailed Alan Tudge's office explaining the points why online poker shouldn't be prohibited. Long story short, I got a response saying poker is pohibited because it's a mix game of skill and basically saying that it will give them the right to enforce companies to stop offering the server when they like

I wrote back with this (keeping in mind I was quite angry at the time);

"Hello,

I think this bill is a big cop out when you have pokie machines in every single town being advertised, open until all hours even after the pub has closed.

Poker is collateral damage in this, studies have highlighted online poker as being very low risk in terms of problem gambling. But it seems like the powers that be don't have the knowledge or don't care about online poker and how much it differs from games such as Black Jack.

Not only for the reasons above but you are also taking away every Australians right to engage in what activities they choose. You might be helping 2.7% of problem gamblers but you are taking it away from 97.3% who enjoy a recreational game of their choose which they enjoy participating in. And that is not even taking into account online poker which is well below the 2.7% suggested by Alan Tudge.

I hope someone with an educated view on online poker can at the very least make amendments to the bill.

Regards,

Chris"

So basically confirming what people said before, if this bill goes through as is online poker is very much dead

really? this is not why the legislation is coming in at all.

the reason for this new legislation is because the international companies are offering sports books to Australians without paying taxes or being regulated by law here.

the government has no problem with gambling as evident from how many ****ing pokie machines there are across victoria and NSW...

im going to call the office and find out who the **** they are trying to kid here, if it is about regulation or if it is about problem gambling?

if it is about problem gambling then i am going to be taking down the casino's with it

if it is about regulation then they need to regulate the market and tax it, every single company in the world is fine with being taxed and regulated and pokerstars would MUCH rather opperate in a country where it is regulated than grey.

this is bull****, i bet packer has some hand in this, lobbying his best mates in the liberal party to ban it so he can make even bigger profits from crownbet, draftstars and the casinos...

complete bull****

welcome to planet earth

Are you talking about the hidden reasons why the bill is coming in or the reason they stated?

The reason they stated is due to problem gambling being higher online than live..

'when parliament sits again' itll be put on the new agenda i'm not sure when that is off hand

A different LNP guy I know who used to be a well known member of the poker community has a meeting with some key people in their party i'm going to compile some of the key info/studies from the submissions for him. If we could get the Libs onside to exempt online poker from the IGA or explicitly make it legal/licensed/regulated that would be huge.

alright so maybe we can hope for an Australian to win the Aussie millions main event which will hopefully get some good publicity, maybe creating a sort of mini poker boom which will create enough support for the bill to be changed to exclude poker.

They sit again start of Feb. They're scheduled to present the report to the senate on 28th February but this updates dynamically I think so could change.

Feb 7th

According to the government's own figures, Australians spend
- $1.4bn online every year (with a fraction of this on poker) and
- $19bn in total with $13bn in pokies.
So disgraceful

Couple extracts taken from some sites in relation to problem gambling in Australia. Cbf to chop them around so just bolded key figures.

Gambling is a popular entertainment among Australians. Over 80% of Australian adults engage in gambling of some kind, which is the highest rate of gambling in the world.

Gambling is also a significant public health issue, with around 80,000 to 160,000 (or 0.5 - 1.0%) of Australian adults experiencing significant problems from gambling and a further 250,000 to 350,000 (or 1.4 - 2.1% of adults) experiencing moderate risks that may make them vulnerable to problem gambling.

Around 600,000 Australians (4 per cent of the adult population) play on the 'pokies' at least weekly. While survey results vary, around 15 per cent of these regular players (95 000) are 'problem gamblers'. And their share of total spending on machines is estimated to range around 40 per cent.


And this is why it'll never change (I'd imagine they are a touch higher today)

State tax revenue from gambling was $5 billion in 2008–09 (or 10 per cent of all state tax revenue).
Victoria has the highest tax dependence on gambling, at 13 per cent, and Western Australia has the lowest, 4 per cent.

quick question. Is Stephen Conroy lobbying for the bill or against the bill? He may be a total flog but he has a ton of weight when it comes to pulling votes.

I've taken a backstep in this thread of late and perhaps you won't want to read this but this is coming from someone that has played and continues to play online poker (not as much as I used to but still occasionally on the weekend) I am probably the example of why they aren't differentiating really from pokies if someone like me can be a losing player (not by much but still a losing player) over the course of at least 5 years of playing then if you translate that to an average player they certainly are a losing player and that is really the principle of not allowing it and how the government is responding to this. The only way we can keep poker going is for the operators here to become an excepted form of an online gaming service as defined under the Interactive Gambling Act (i.e. it becomes licensed and then regulated).

He is a total flog and my guess is that he would be for it.

CRP90 - assume you saw the news today for bringing that up. If not, he just became head of a gambling industry lobby group and they seem very pro-bill.

They are likely under calling it, I'm pretty sure UK did b4 they brought it all in to regulation and got the numbers...there is a big bump of about a billion now they can count it better (and tax it).

The key is that thatey are protecting the highly taxed retail monopoly. In the UK online now biggest, that's the way lots of retail/entertainment is going.

No, it is a self selecting sample in a smaller group. Problem Gamblers bet in lots of ways and are early adopters. If you could ban and enforce an end to online they would still be problem gamblers bu be spending where the tax is high.

Blackjack is a skilled game.

No you wont.

Roulette a better example, but Black Jack is still more luck than skill.

Just found all this after watching table talk with doug polk n papi. Seems like it's too late to make a submission, let me know if I can do anything else. I sent an email to Xenophon a couple years back and their office said he knew the distinction between poker and slots, I guess he would.

Doesn't seem good, and what do we end up with anyway?, pokerstars.it?

Also does anyone know if it's going to be ok to withdraw funds if the bill passes? Would be quite a chunk for some of us and with all the deposit and withdrawal fees keeping small amounts on is a pain.

Challenge accepted.

For what it's worth there have been several australian main event winners, David Gorr, Oliver Speidel, Manny Stavropolous etc

Stars sent me an email assuring me we'd be able to withdraw if they're forced to pull out. They did the same for the US so I assume its fine. When Poker Asia Pacific was given the shutdown order this year the company was able to cash out all players with no issues etc as well.

Conroy is truly awful and I say this as someone who leans Labor over Liberal as a voter in general, his proposed internet filter that failed was a ridiculous awful idea and he is completely clueless when it comes to internet related things despite being communications minister. I assume they're pro-bill the key if it's going to pass is getting online poker exempted from the IGA somehow either through an amendment or a separate measure. At this point I still think we want the bill to fail. I'll wait and see how my friends meeting goes with the LNP guys and update the thread with any relevant info, perhaps at Aussie Millions (i'll be there) we can put together a lobbying campaign as there will be thousands of poker players in the Crown poker room, perhaps we can arrange for a meeting with a key sympathetic senator or something and have a few dozen people turn up at least.

Bumping thread to the frontpage.

Have been speaking to a few Australians who want to know how they can help. I need to get the time to do some research on the process for adding an amendment to the bill, perhaps as a community we can lobby a senator who is pro-online poker like David Leyonhjelm to table an amendment exempting poker from the IGA as a game of skill - ideally if we could also get Nick X or another crossbench on board that would be great, apparently Xenophon is anti gambling but not anti poker and it's a big issue for NXT

I'm willing to do the research midweek, does anyone want to weigh in on our path forward as a community prior to February when parliament sits again?

Nick Xenophon is the face of anti-gambling. His support would really highlight the difference between online poker and other forms of gambling.

I strongly recommend targeting David Leyonhjelm, I think he's is the only hope to get an amendment.

Leyonhjelm's staff confirmed to me that he supports our position that online poker should be legal when I called his office

A well known member of the poker community who is politically involved with the LNP is in the process of moving a motion to amend the Interactive Gambling Amendment Act to specifically exclude online poker at his next local meeting later in the week. He thinks it should pass automatically at the meeting and he will then provide the motion and supporting documents to his local MP and then take it to the Minister from there and follow the process to try and get it to be the official position of the LNP, if he succeeds then he will basically have saved online poker in Australia and we should all support his efforts in any way that we can. I'm not sure if he wants to be named or not, but I can pass info on to him on behalf of anyone.

At his request I have given him links to our submissions made plus the studies we have cited supporting our position that poker is a low risk form of gambling, social game of skill and licensing and regulating it provides jobs and revenue, etc. if anyone has any other info they want to get to him that may help you can send it to me or contact him directly if you know him (he's pretty well known in the poker community)

As a back up option, we should look into contacting Nick Xenophon see if we can get him on board as he is the face of anti-gambling in Australia as the previous poster stated and a high profile Aussie pro is friends with his family and said he will try to get a meeting, i'll contact that player now and see if he has any updates for us.

It could also be worth taking the LNP guy's submission (he knows the process better than I do) to David Leyonhjelm and sign it basically from all of us in the poker community, i'm sure we could get 100+ signatures in a week or so from poker players, and i'll be at Aussie Millions in a few weeks and could potentially get several hundred behind it if we want to also do a petition for Sen. Leyonhjelm (and/or the LNP Minister) to get behind excluding poker from the IGA as a game of skill.