The Australian Government Has Reversed Some Gambling Laws That Affect Online Gambling

Added: December 6, 2013

A while back, during the Gillard administration, the Australian government made some changes to gambling law, that affected Australian online gamblers, and online casino sites offering online gambling services to Australian citizens. This included the requirement for online casino sites, and also real world casinos, to place a warning on all video poker games, about the risk of online gambling addiction, to make sure that Australian online gamblers were kept safe whilst playing at both an online casino, and a real world casino. These gambling law changes were only made less than a year ago.

Now we are under the Abbot administration, the Australian government has decided to redact the gambling law changes entirely. Also, the proposed changes to gambling law, which would have seen Australian online gamblers needing to specify exactly how much they were willing to wager in total, before playing any online gambling game, have been scrapped. This change to online gambling law was supposed to come into effect on the 1st of February next year, now it will not.

However, three is opposition to the redaction of these online gambling law changes in Australia. For example, Greens Senator, Richard Di Natale, has criticized the decision to withdraw these changes, but saying, "That one of the Abbott Government's first Bills gives the pokies industry everything it wants, at the expense of vulnerable families, tells you everything you need to know about this Government."

Abbot was quick to respond to this statement, and replied that, “We support voluntary pre-commitment, more counseling for problem gamblers, and we will implement stronger restrictions on online gambling,"

It is unlikely that opposition to these gambling law changes will have any effect, or stop the reversal taking place. And this is absolutely great news for Australian online gamblers, and the online casino industry in Australia in general. Recently we have seen increasingly stiff legislation that has all but forced many of the traditional online casino sites that have operated in Australia for many years, to close their doors to Australian online gamblers.

Let’s hope the reversal of these gambling laws, in particular the removal of the requirement for online casino players to specify a total sum they will wager, will help to stimulate the online casino market in Australia, and hopefully set us on the path to becoming, once again, one of the most online gambling friendly nations in the world.