Quote:
Originally Posted by _red_dog
Joey, I know you are a busy man, would it be possible to get some sort of trip report? An overall feel of the situation, something like that?
Hey mate,
I did mean to do this the other day but got sidetracked. I hopefully covered a lot of stuff in my previous post (the long one) but I will give a quick summary.
So all in all it was positive.
I ended up meeting with about a dozen MPs and all in all the feeling was positive.
As you are probably aware by now this has led to Senator Leyonhjelm moving an amendment on our behalf to legalise 'casino-style poker and blackjack'. I note a few comments from earlier on wishing he hadn't included blackjack. I appreciate these sentiments and I relayed to him my concerns about this as well as 'casino-style' poker.
It is important to understand though that Senator Leyonhjelm is a libertarian first and foremost so he will look for as much freedom as possible. This doesn't mean he wont negotiate his position down at a later date but his personal view is that players should be free to play both games.
I met with a lot of members from the government and these were largely strategic. We met with a lot of the more vocal libertarian leaning MPs such as Tim Wilson (Goldstein), Senator Paterson (Victoria), Jason Falinski (MacKellar), Rick Wilson (O'Connor), George Christensen (Dawson). Generally speaking a lot of the people I spoke to agreed with our position (albeit to varying degrees) and were happy to make representations to the Minister on our behalf calling for an amendment to allow online poker in Australia.
As the game will now be played out in the Senate I also spent some time discussing things with some of the crucial cross bench votes on the Senate (I spoke with Cory Bernardi and had a conversation with the office of Derryn Hinch and also with a One Nation Policy Advisor). Once again the view of all of these people was generally positive.
As mentioned we are in a much stronger place than we were a month ago.
Before it was possible for the Minister to not have a position on poker. He could just use the line that 'well that is the current law and we aren't changing it' and that would have been sufficient for the Bill to pass as is.
Now that Senator Leyonhjelm is calling for the amendment along with many members of his party he will need to make a decision one way or another.
I still come back to the point that I don't believe it was the Minister's intention to ban online poker so I am confident that we will eventually get him to realise that this is an issue and make the amendment himself. It is just important that we all continue to rally our local MPs etc to ensure that they all share this point with him to help him come to the decision sooner.
The next month is all about highlighting the cause. We have the month to get the word out there about our situation before it is too late.
Anyone that wants to help in anyway please let me know!
JoeyDel
