Nick Xenophon (SA, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Leyonhjelm has obviously thought through this amendment and it would be disrespectful not to respond to it.

I and my colleagues do not support this amendment for a number of reasons. There is an ambiguity as to how it would operate and as to what the betting limits would be. I have met with poker machine players who like playing online poker, and they have made the point that sometimes you pay $50 and it will last you for a number of hours, which is very different from sports betting services where you can lose thousands of dollars with just one bet. Their argument is that there is an inconsistency in the current law that allows sports betting where enormous amounts of money can be lost; whereas, if online poker were regulated with very small bet limits, it would not be as harmful as sports betting. I am not canvassing and I am not commenting on those remarks as such. But, in the context of this debate, whilst I do not want to see any expansion of online gambling, there does seem to be a dichotomy between poker players, who have described to me that they can bet 1c at a time and lose very small amounts of money in the scheme of things, and sports betting. Senator Leyonhjelm has raised an important issue.

The paradox may be that if there were very low bet limits, and I am talking very low bet limits as a number of cents compared to dollars or multiples of dollars, the impact would be smaller than sports betting as it currently exists. It is a matter that the Productivity Commission raised in its reports on gambling. I think there will still be an ongoing debate on this, and I understand the point of online poker players who say that there is a dichotomy between a game where $50 will keep you playing all day compared to being able to lose literally tens of thousands of dollars at a time with sports betting. This is something that will need to be debated. I do not want to be seen to be encouraging an expansion of gambling, but there is an inconsistency in the approach of the government and opposition to sports betting, where you can bet thousands of dollars at a time per game or per sporting event—per horse race—compared to online poker, where there could be some very strict limits as to what could be bet. It is something that needs to be debated further.