online poker australia

Online Poker Sites For Australians

Online poker Australia has come in for a bit of flak from the Australian government few months back and there was talk of slapping a ban on some online gaming sites. But recently the Federal Government of Australia is thinking of reviewing the websites that it had hauled up for banning by a parliamentary committee or a group of notable citizens.

The earlier move was criticized by the media as an example of blatant internet censorship clubbing online gaming with other vices like illegal prostitution.

Primarily, the aim was to restrict access of computer savvy children to the online poker Australia sites. In a way, gambling on the internet was equated with pornography and other illegal sites. It is surprising because the BBC had observed as early as 2001 that Australia was poised to be the hub of online casinos.

True to what the BBC said, in the last few years the gaming industry has swelled its turnover to several billions and single handedly contributed much to the exchequer of every state in Australia where they operate. In a recent finding, the number of online casinos numbered 480 in Oceania alone with a majority of them based in Australia.

Leaving out the casino lists, it was also revealed that nearly 85% of the adult population of Australia was involved in some form of gambling activity or the other. In this scenario how could a website that triggered the move for a ban blow the whistle that some online poker sites among many other innocuous websites were publishing blacklisted material.

Poker is not a game that has been imported from somewhere else in recent years. It has been an Australian favorite ever since gambling was legalized way back in 1956. And gambling is not new to the nation as it came with the arrival of the convicts. It was beyond normal reasoning of the average Australian how online poker Australia could be blamed for publishing blacklisted material.

But the sites that had been blacklisted are still not clear. It is the prerogative of the ACMA or the Australian Communications and Media Authority to figure out which ones should come in for censure and require filtering. The move has been criticized by the media as the list of banned websites has not been made public which in a way makes a counter argument or a legal action redundant. It has left the websites, whichever they are without an opportunity to challenge the decision.

A report published in the Sydney Morning Herald said that Stephen Conroy, the Communications Minister was considering greater transparency about the blacklisting of online poker Australia sites. There are some 977 sites that have come under the specter of a ban including some online poker rooms. The government is yet to go ahead with the policy as it is still under review, but it has drawn criticism from all quarters about the degree of censorship on some of the most popular online poker Australia sites that generate a good deal of revenue.

online poker australia