Leveling Betting in Australia
There has been no denying the fact that Australia has some of the more
controversial policies when it comes to the online casino gambling industry. In
fact, even though the US is also trying to ban internet gambling, Australia has
taken all of that attention away from the US with attempts and actions intended
to create a censored market in Australia that imposes on internet freedoms and
blocks sites the government deems inappropriate at the ISP level. The situation
though has actually gone a lot deeper than the internet side of gambling and the
Aussie betting and land gambling industry has been the seat of controversy as
well because of the mixed legislation in the five different Australian states
regarding internet betting.
The Aussie government has just actually passed a ruling that will allow
sportsbetting companies (land operations not the online casinos yet) to operate
across state lines without incurring any extra taxation fees as has been the
case in New South Wales. The NSW government has a 1.5 percent tax on the betting
companies pulling a decent sum of money out of the state. Australia though
already only has other Aussie companies operating in the state and Sportsbet
Australia took the issue to court in objection to the extra tax that was placed
on out of state operators.
The policy was previously in place as a way to protect state markets and keep
TabCorp (a NSW company) as the leader within the market and thus contributing
funds to the state budget. The liberalization of even this part of the land
betting market is an indicator that some companies may tend toward a global and
legal online casino gambling industry in the future as well. Although the Aussie
government is pretty anti-internet gambling right now there my not be any other
long term choice. |