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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (19 June) . . Page.. 2014 ..
MS TUCKER (continuing):
providing credit, and hence a requirement for a betting account, and a very well-defined system of self-exclusion.
I have raised issues in the past about the thoroughness of the Interactive Gambling Act and have pointed out potential problems in these protection mechanisms. But this new system for sports betting on the Net provides less consumer protection. Why should wagering on the Net be subject to the same consumer mechanisms as virtual casinos and pokies? Because the Internet offers a particular gambling environment, regardless of what you are betting on. Whether it is a real-life race, the Logies, or a virtual roulette wheel, the gambler is still sitting at a computer screen, with the flashing lights and array of events available at the click of mouse.
Yet the conditions on that environment are quite different. The gambling environment-the place in which people gamble-is one of the factors that influence people's gambling behaviour: whether one keeps going or stops to take stock and possibly remove oneself from the situation. The Productivity Commission tells us:
... that harm minimisation measures used need to take account of the context in which gambling takes place. Thus, signs are useful in physical venues, but risk warnings and help screens are appropriate for Internet and TV gambling technologies.
The Productivity Commission made a statement, based on a comprehensive review of literature and on their own primary research, that the Internet environment itself requires particular warnings, et cetera. So why are there such different requirements depending on what it is you are betting on? The people who argue that sports betting on the Net is different from casino, card or pokie betting on the Net say that the important difference is that casino betting, et cetera, is controlled to some extent by software written or controlled by the gambling licensee. But really this difference just presents a need for different kinds of probity checks on the events themselves. The races, et cetera, which are the subject of sports betting are physical events, and there are already systems with stewards, umpires and electoral commissioners, and so on, to act as checks on the fairness and legitimacy of these physical events, separate from the betting system.
The virtual games need that same type of scrutiny to give some level of certainty that the result is not influenced to the benefit of the person taking bets. This is the difference between wagering and virtual casinos and pokies. We have seen cases in sports and in racing where the lure of gambling profits have interfered with the outcome of the event. That is why I say "a level of certainty"-it is not foolproof, and no doubt the virtual games will also not be entirely watertight. There is also a concern about the capacity to bet on elections.
As I have said, these forms of gambling present a very similar environment to the gambler, and I see this as an opportunity missed. I would like to say a bit more on the issue of credit given by gambling licensees-bookmakers. It is prohibited for a licensed interactive gambling provider to provide credit to gamblers. TABs are also prohibited from providing credit without reasonable excuse, whatever that means. This is clearly because access to credit and the promotion of credit by the gambling company makes it all too easy for a person caught up in the belief that their luck may turn, that they just
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