Relax online gambling rules or risk revenues - UPDATE

Beverley Head
Thursday, 15 April 2010 14:17

IT Policy - Regulation

Unless the Australian Government relaxes its rules on internet gambling, more people will gamble on overseas sites, potentially placing them at risk, and leading to Australia missing out on tens of millions of dollars in potential tax revenues.

Releasing an international report into online gambling today, KPMG's Anthony Travers, partner in charge of the Australian gaming industry practice, said that Governments around the world were now rethinking their opposition to online gambling - Australia included.

In Australia although online betting companies can register in some states and territories, for example the Northern Territory, and provide some internet based wagering style services, online poker machines and casino style betting is outlawed. That said, KPMG's report Online Gambling, a gamble or a sure-bet? quotes figures suggesting that $790 million was spent on overseas online gambling sites in 2008.

If Australia maintained the status quo, and continues to rely on the Interactive Gambling Act 2001; 'That figure we've quoted for underground gambling would increase,' Travers told iTWire. 'The local market would miss out and we would miss out on the tax from that activity.'

In addition there would be scant protection for people using the overseas sites, especially problem gamblers, he warned.

It will be extra food for thought for the Federal Government as it mulls over the Productivity Commission's final report on gambling. Handed to the Government recently, the findings have yet to be made public.

Its draft report, which was released last October, however noted that the online gambling ban is not working, with Australians increasingly gambling abroad on sites with minimal consumer protection. In its draft report the Commission proposed what it described as 'managed liberalisation' which would involve allowing online gaming as long as stringent harm minimisation measures were also introduced.