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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (30 March) . . Page.. 1104 ..
Ms Tucker: I said in December.
MR HUMPHRIES: We tabled the decision. We tabled the lifting of the sports betting licences in December as well. Ms Tucker is wrong. We did not make a decision without looking at what the Allen report had to say about this subject.
Let us be clear about one thing. There are two different issues at work here. There is gambling on the Internet, something which, to be more precise, the ACT's legislation refers to as interactive gambling. I will quote the report Ms Tucker has referred to, the Netbets report, the Senate standing committee report on this subject. Netbets divides gambling into two different categories. First of all, there is online gaming. That is defined on page 2 of the report as:
... where the gambling event is based on a computer program and the outcome is determined by a random number generator. These activities involve no element of skill and include games such as black-jack, poker, lotteries and electronic gaming machines.
Mr Quinlan: That is unkind. There is no skill in blackjack?
MR HUMPHRIES: I am sorry, Mr Quinlan, but when you play the computer there is no skill involved in blackjack. Perhaps it is the way that you twiddle the return button, but I am told there is no skill involved. Then there is interactive wagering, defined as:
... where the gambling event takes place on a physical race track or playing field. The Internet merely provides a new mechanism for placing the wagers.
The report says, on page 4:
... the regulation of interactive wagering ... is similar in principle to legislation that regulates telephone betting.
So there are two concepts here. One is the concept of, if you like, playing games which are built into the computer, games which are on line for you to play, much as if you would be playing a poker machine or playing some other game based on an element of chance. Then there is interactive wagering, which is basically no more than using the Internet as your medium to reach the person who is going to receive your bet. It works in much the same way as when you pick up the telephone and place a bet or walk down to the TAB and place your bet over a counter or ask your mate when he is going down the road to put a bet on with the bookmaker you are friendly with.
I think Ms Tucker's arguments confuse those two issues. It is true that much sports betting is done on line, but it is not done on line because it is, in the definition of the Netbets report, online gaming. In fact, it is only using the Internet in order to be able to place the bet. To illustrate my point, I could deal with Ms Tucker's concerns about
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