Australian government may allow change on online sports gambling stance

[Jeff]

The Australian government may water down legislation which would permanently ban all gambling on the internet.

Communications Minister Senator Richard Alston said it may have to allow sports betting if its proposed law is to pass through Senate.

The government announced the proposed ban in March after a report estimated around 290,000 Australians have problems with gambling.

The country has one of the highest proportions of gambling addicts in the world.

The ban - which targets only domestic websites - was passed by parliament's lower house earlier this year, but faces a far more hostile Senate this week, where the government lacks a majority.

Senator Alston told Nine Network television the government could be prepared to make a distinction between sports betting and online casinos to guarantee the law's passage in the next two weeks.

Story filed: 10:51 Monday 18th June 2001

[Jeff]

Ban on Net gambling shapes as a sure thing

By Tom Allard and Kirsty Needham

The Federal Government's ban on online gambling is poised to pass the Senate this week but Australians will still be able to place bets on the races, sporting contests and even casino games over the Internet.

The Minister for Communications, Senator Alston, yesterday flagged his support for exempting sports wagering from the ban amid pressure from the racing industry and public companies such as the TAB that have many small shareholders.

The Australian Greens Senator Bob Brown and at least three Democrats - senators Lyn Allison, John Woodley and Meg Lees - are likely to support the Government's amended legislation and pass it through the Upper House this week following the shift.

The Government needs the backing of four senators after Labor said it could not endorse "unworkable" legislation.

"I think the numbers will be there," Senator Allison said before today's party room meeting on the issue. She has already indicated her support for an amended online gambling ban, as has her colleague Senator Woodley and Senator Brown.


That final vote needed is likely to come from Senator Lees - one of three Democrats who had been undecided on their vote.

She said yesterday she would vote with the Government if sports wagering was excluded and a review of the ban after two years was mandated.

The Government's move on sports wagering may be the master stroke to get the legislation passed but it makes a selective online gambling ban even more so.

The original legislation only stopped online gambling by companies operating in Australia, meaning gamblers here could still use the Web to play casino games on offshore sites.

Launching the legislation in March, Senator Alston said the ban would be effective because people would not take the risk of gambling on an "unregulated site" offshore.

But Mr Kerry Packer's Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd, among other companies, has already said it will shift its online gambling interests offshore, probably to Vanuatu.

The chief executive of the Internet Industry Association, Mr Peter Coroneos, has released a technical study of the Government's bill undertaken by a consulting firm, which concludes it is not technically feasible to stop Australians using either offshore or local Internet casinos.

The Gartner Group found any blocking technologies were easily bypassed. It also noted the rise of the Napster song-swapping phenomenon as an example of the "secret communities of Internet users" that were developing beyond the radar of filtering software, which would soon become obsolete.

Mr Coroneos said: "The legislation is technically inept and has no real prospects of protecting those whom it claims to protect. From a technical viewpoint, the bill will damage industry participants who are forced to try to make it work while delivering no tangible benefit to end users."

In drafting the legislation, the Government has also discovered, to its surprise, that it has the power to regulate linked poker machine jackpots because they are operated online.

But Senator Alston signalled yesterday that he would not use the power.

He said this was not hypocritical - the Prime Minster has lamented the social evil of poker machine proliferation - and the power to regulate the machines properly lay with the States.

"The issue really is not to wind the clock back but to address the future explosion of gambling opportunities, which Australians have made it very clear they don't want," Senator Alston told the Nine Network's Sunday program.