Yeah I agree. When reading it I cringed that it started with whoa is me I'll have to get a real job !

I reckon that article (with the angle it took) did more harm to the cause than good.

Starting to get some breakthrough.

Senator Leyonhjelm has confirmed he will move an amendment on our behalf in the Senate.

GOGOGOGO!!!

Thats awesome work JoeyDel, Thanks for doing all of this for all us Australians !

Now you need a pro regulation guy or gal to go with the libertarian....

Great work Joey !

Wow great work Joey.

Way to go Joey

LFG! Joey for PM

I got this from Xenophon's office today:

Thank you for your email to Nick Xenophon. I am responding on his behalf.

Thank you for your feedback regarding the Interactive Gambling Amendment Bill 2016, particularly in relation to online poker. I have passed your comments on to Nick and his legislative adviser for their reference and consideration.

This Bill does not change the existing policy decisions about what services should be available and how they should be regulated. You can read more about the Bill here: http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_...#_Toc468286247

It is our understanding based on advice from Minister for Human Services Alan Tudge’s office that online poker providers based in Australia should not be affected. Ie - if an online poker company holds a license issued in Australia then they will not be affected.

On 10 November 2016, the Senate referred the Interactive Gambling Amendment Bill 2016 to the Senate Environment and Communications Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 30 November 2016. You can view the Report here: http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_...unications/IGA

You may also wish to contact the Minister’s office if you have further queries about the impact on online poker. You can find contact details for the Minister here: http://www.aph.gov.au/Senators_and_M...arian?MPID=M2Y

Thank you again for taking the time to write to Nick and I hope this information is of assistance.

Kind regards
Morgan

Joey is out hero. gogogo

Senator Leyonhjelm made a tweet about this today confirming he will move an amendment for us. We should all retweet/like it and send him some words of encouragement/support

https://twitter.com/DavidLeyonhjelm/...43394339893248

We should all also contact our senators and ask them to support his amendment

Agreed, have never voted LNP but would if Joey led the party. Give it 20 years and maybe we'll get a chance to.

Joey, any chance of a contact your senators form with pre-filled 'support the Leyonhjelm amendment' writing for tomorrow's action plan? I'll manually tag my senators on twitter today in DL's twitter post asking for their support

If you google 'state name senators' youll get a list of your state's 12 senators, these are mine in QLD, should be fairly easy to then find their twitter accounts and ask them to support the Leyonhjelm amendment prior to passing the IGA legislation

please support the Leyonhjelm Amendment prior to passing the IGA legislation #AusFight4Poker is the message I used feel free to copy it or write your own. Tweeted to the leaders of all of the parties, a bunch of the crossbench, all of the QLD senators with a twitter account, Minister Tudge and a few other high profile senators like Scott Ludlam and MPs like Andrew Wilkie etc

Someone high profile like Scott Ludlam or Nick Xenophon would be perfect, it's a totally sensible position to pass the amendment to protect games of skill like poker and then pass the legislation, and once online poker is exempted from the IGA the government can pass separate legislation regulating the industry properly although that may take time to write a good bill, something similar to the UK laws would make sense.

at worst if the legislation allows Australian based online sites i can't see why Crown Poker wouldn't enter that market.

That'd be the next step is paving a path for Australian operators to apply for a license and run a site - Poker Asia Pacific showed it can be done if it's legal so there's no reason why the major Australian operators like Crown and Star can't launch online poker rooms to compete with the offshore sites like Stars (and Stars and co should be able to remain in the market but be taxed/regulated etc but that'll be separate legislation to this amendment I think)

SENATORS & MEMBERS SEARCH:

http://www.aph.gov.au/Senators_and_M...1&gen=0&ps=100

I just sent this to Morgan, she sat in on the meeting i had with Senator Xenophon last week.

Hi Morgan,

Please see below correspondence you have had with another constituent.

I just wanted to bring one part of this to the attention of Senator Xenophon and his adviser in this space (John from memory).

Your letter below states:

"It is our understanding based on advice from Minister for Human Services Alan Tudge’s office that online poker providers based in Australia should not be affected. Ie - if an online poker company holds a license issued in Australia then they will not be affected."

The Minister's office said the same thing to me in a previous meeting and it is actually incorrect.

Whilst poker is listed as a prohibited service in Federal law it is not possible for the states to provide licensing for it. Even if a poker site did set up in Australia to provide prohibited services to an Australian based player is illegal whether the company doing so is licensed here or not.

No reputable company will do this, they will leave the Australian market and only the black market operators will remain.

There is no way for safe, regulated poker services to be offered to Australians without poker (or peer to peer based games of skill) being listed as an excluded service.

Thank you once again for your time and understanding on the matter.

Joseph Del Duca

Maybe we should make a thread about what we'd like from an Australian licenced online poker site

For me, it's huge mtt field sizes and guarantees at all stakes running 24-7-365

Edit: which underlines my key reservation that the player volumes may make this unworkable unless there is a huge initial commitment and investment. It's hard to see the required ROI for a new peovider in this space.

A better option is for stars to apply for the licence and provide some Australian portal to existing infrastructure, but I've no idea whether this is even possible from a systems level or satisfies new regulatory requirements.

I have emailed all the NSW senators pleading them to stand with leyonhjelm. GL us.

And Joey wd mate
Getting any sort of traction and a voice in the senate is a great achievement

Joey and I have received contact today from Sen. Leyonhjelm's office. Things looking promising on that front. I'm not sure what can and can't be made public yet so will leave that up to Joey once he has finished speaking with them. He's also going to have more info than me as he's speaking with them directly.

In the meantime, Retweet/like his twitter post and show him our appreciation for fighting for our freedom to play online poker. Also obviously regardless of our views on the party's platform as a whole, we should all consider giving the LDP our votes in the Senate at the next election cycle for being the party that stepped up to fight for us today.

https://twitter.com/DavidLeyonhjelm/...43394339893248

well done joey!

Fairy good? JFC u have no clues at all do you. That is an awful article for your agenda. Here's Jared father of two complaining he can't continue his absolute dead end career of online gambling.

The "right wing mouth breather" comments are just valid logical points of view from normal people. Why the f should they care about pro poker players who contribute nothing to society, pay no tax and worst of all most of them claim unemployment benefits while doing so?

Of course i pointed out poker pros have no leverage with the Everyman for these reasons much earlier in this thread ....and was roundly abused for doing so (as well as receiving "go f your dead mother" PMs from some loser sicko)

This guy Joey has been unbelievable but he's been given no support. All that time he's put in unpaid hours plus hundreds of his own money. He's bang on ....what needed to happen was 15-20k pumped into Facebook ads placed by someone clued up on the algorithm and experience driving FBbusiness manager and that could have made a real difference. So the balling online pro poker community put up $1300 to save their careers? Wow. Bet most of the money came from recs too

I absolutely think it sucks Australia is losing online. I'm in Australia myself 6 times a year and I love squeezing in MTT sessions when away from family obligations. But the deluded entitled attitude of poker pros ITT is sickening

I tweeted this to the Victorian senators who had twitter