Australian Online Gaming Comes Under Attack

The legal state of online gambling in Australia is extremely complicated right now. Several popular online casino brands offer its services to players from Australia, but it's technically illegal to do so. In spite of this, there has not been a single arrest or indictment of anyone for offering their online gambling services to Australian players. Even though there has been no legal trouble, a lot of online casino brands catch heat in this country via the typical arguments against gambling: ethical questions, problem gambling and taxes. While all three of these problems could be worked on by regulating the online gambling industry in Australia, lawmakers haven't gotten around to doing it yet.

The Herald Sun and a number of other Australian news outlets recently ran reports about problem gambling in Australia. There are a lot of pokie machines and poker machines available in different brick-and-mortar establishments across the country like hotels, pubs and more. While opponents of online gambling have tried to say that problem gambling will drastically increase if the industry is regulated in Australia, these reports seem to indicate otherwise. In fact, these reports indicate that there is a lot of evidence to support a claim that online gambling does not affect problem gambling rates very much at all.

Instead, studies by individuals like Professor Malcolm Battersby at Flinders University suggest that it's the readily-available pokie machines and poker machines that cause the highest rates of compulsive gambling problems. Battersby is the director at Flinders University of the Human Behavior and Health Research Unit, and he believes that the recent growth in areas like online gambling and sports betting are not primarily to blame for the increase in the pure number of individuals that are being treated at the unit. His research suggests that people who gamble online are less likely to be faced with compulsive gambling problems than individuals who play the pokies on a regular basis.

While there's no debate about whether compulsive gambling can cause problems in society, it's good to see that there is evidence out there to help defend online gambling from wild accusations. The opponents of online gambling in Australia will say and do anything that they can to keep it from becoming regulated because they are playing politics instead of actually trying to protect and serve the citizens of Australia. Most people believe that online gambling will eventually become regulated in the country, but it may take a while.