Agenda for OLGAA Launch

Global Gaming Services Pty. Ltd. will hold a meeting on August 24 in which the OnLine Gambling Association of Australia (OLGAA) will be launched. Following is the agenda for the meeting.

Background:

The evolution of digital gambling continues: Internet gambling is in the home (accessible), its global (market), its interactive (entertainment), its virtual (escapism), and its electronic commerce ($). It is NOT currently regulated with any desired efficacy or certainty.

For the first time in history, technology assisted gambling threatens to subvert attempts at regulation as jurisdictional borders are broken down and gambling with foreign providers from the living room begins to evolve. Governments who have become heavily reliant on gambling tax are faced with the prospects of their taxation base being eroded (directly through loss of revenue or indirectly through loss of credibility) and into being reactive as technology dictates policy.

While the U.S. attempts prohibition (driving established gambling operators out of the market and unregulated services underground) Australia has an exceptional opportunity to set its mark globally by responsibly promoting a regulated online industry. Internet gambling is about gambling, tourism, shopping, and much more. It is also about consumer choice! Choice based on comfort; comfort based on the reputable regulation and industry "Name Brands".

Gambling law is largely a State issue, but the nature of the medium dictates that the matters of detection and control require a National approach. Industry drives the technology, government drives the policy. Government can't keep up, nor can they reasonably prevent or control the current evolution of technology assisted gambling. Industry must cooperate with government at the State and Federal level and be proactive in self-regulation.

There are many, many issues that can only be resolved by a national and multilateral, proactive and responsible approach toward communication based (online) gambling.. The States and Territories have said themselves in the draft regulatory model that "In the long term a non-cooperative approach can only result in the ineffective regulation of interactive home gambling products and the erosion of the gambling taxation revenue of all States and Territories." At a time when the Federal Government has called for an inquiry into gambling, there exists a possibility that certain members of the government and community may take an ill-informed prohibitionist's approach. This could have severe social and economic consequences, as a prohibition in Australia would not impact upon "illegal" games operated from elsewhere in the world.

We must cooperate to ensure that players have a choice: legal and well regulated Australian sites or "illegal" offshore sites. The Australian market potential pales into insignificance when compared to a global market. We should get over Federalism, cooperate as a nation and get on with competing globally. By cooperating nationally, we ensure that the same barriers to entry apply: Internal controls, security, financials, probity, taxation, etc. There is plenty of scope to overlook a significant issue or to turn a "blind-eye" at the risk of damaging the credibility of the Australian industry as a whole. We only have one chance to get it right.

Agenda: