This week, Barry O’Farrell submitted his review of Australia’s current gambling laws. The review takes into consideration many different types of gambling, including online gambling, sports betting and pokies, so there is potential for some big changes to be made in coming years. Originally, the review only supposed to focus on existing gaming operators and minimising harm in the services.

It would have only looked at offering unsolicited credit, cold calling, data sharing and gambling inducements. However, gaming industry professionals wanted a more comprehensive review, so O’Farrell took a good, long hard look at gambling in the country overall. 79 submissions were made to the review, including submissions from gaming operators like CrownBet and TabCorp.

Many of these bookmakers have made the case for in-play betting that is offered over the internet. Currently, players can only place in-play wagers using telephone betting services, but locally-licensed companies state that this restricting is causing them to lose out on business to offshore bookmakers. According to The Conversation, CrownBet wants to impose penalties for offshore gambling operators.

Currently, it is illegal for offshore operators to offer their services to Australian residents – but, no one has ever been prosecuted. As such, there local operators continue to lose business to overseas companies. This proposed reform would rectify this issue. TabCorp has backed CrownBet, and has also suggested that the players who use offshore gambling sites should be penalised as well.

Over the course of the next few months, lawmakers will take a look at the review and decide what reforms should be imposed. This is a very interesting time for the Australian gambling market, as local gambling laws have not been amended in quite some time. As this story develops, we will keep you posted about the types of changes you can expect to see in the Australian gambling world.

About the Author

George Anderson
Author George, has over 25+ years’ experience in the Pokies and Casinos industry throughout Australia and New Zealand. Loves to research new Pokies games on the block and follows announcements from top industry providers about their upcoming releases. As soon as a new interesting pokie game appears on his radar, George is there to check it out and give you the scoop before anyone else and tell you about all casino sites where can play the latest game. Before this gig, George worked as Pokie game tester, making him an ideal candidate for this genre of work. He is also an animal lover and a proud owner of three dogs.