Net casinos should be blocked in Australia – CLC recommends

Australia’s Communications Law Centre (“CLC”) has put a submission to a parliamentary inquiry recommending Australians be prevented from accessing online casino and poker sites.  ISP filtering and/or UIGEA style  payment blocking measures were suggested as possible solutions to the fact that current prohibitive laws are largely ineffective in preventing Australians from playing online.

The Interactive Gambling Act has been in place for almost a decade now, and while the letter of this law bans offshore unlicensed operators from accepting bets from Australians, in practice very few foreign operators pay it much attention – and we’re not talking about small back-room operators either. London Stock Exchange listed companies are amongst the list of net casinos not only accepting Australian players but actively and aggressively marketing to them.

The problem with a law that seeks to govern parties that are beyond its jurisdiction is that…well…those parties have very little incentive to comply.  Combine this with the fact that Australia is a nation known to have a healthy gambling appetite (ever heard that saying that Australians would bet on 2 flies crawling up a wall?) and it was only a matter of time before it rose to the top of many operators’ list of target markets.

Bottom line is the current law doesn’t work – or as the CLC put it in their submission, “the prohibition of international gambling sites has been largely ineffective as the rate of Australian access to such sites continues to increase over time.”

The Australian Internet Bookmakers Association (“AIBA”) were even blunter (they also made a submission) in their assessment, saying:

“The Act [IGA] has been worse than useless … the Act is unenforceable internationally, and so operators outside of Australia have ignored it.”

The AIBA’s concerns are largely competition based.  That is, they don’t want to share the Australian gambling pie with offshore operators – particularly those offering attractive odds or worse still, games like blackjack that they are unable themselves to offer.

Of course they’re also concerned about player welfare – and pointed out that:

“There is a different risk profile for each form of gambling [online wagering versus internet casino games]…For wagering, the internet is merely a communication channel.”

So when you place a $20 bet on a sporting event the internet is a communication channel, but when you place a $20 bet on a casino game the internet becomes a something very different, transforming the average punter into a gambling Gollum – “My Precious! Oh, my Precious”.

The government’s motivation in getting the law to work is also an interesting one.

Is it driven by a desire to reduce the amount of money Australians gamble generally?  This would be hard to argue given they (state and federal governments) sanction a major casino in almost every State, more poker machines (slots) per-capita than almost any other country in the world, a year round wagering industry that includes “the race that stops a nation” (Melbourne Cup) and a ubiquitous local sports betting industry.  Not to mention lottery draws almost every night of the week.

No the concern isn’t how much Australians gamble.  It’s is whether a portion of that bet makes it’s way into Treasury coffers.

Here’s a hypothetical question.

If the Australian government could wave a magical wand that either:

1. completely prevented every Internet casino from being able to accept a bet from any Australian resident; or
2. ensured that the government received 20% of the net gaming of any Australians playing at those casinos,

which do you think they’d choose?

Call me a cynic, but I think they would choose option 2.

I also think that if option 2 was somehow possible, the high speed broadband network they keep talking about would have been in place many years ago to help facilitate online play.