Australian independent senator Nick Xenophon has a new target in his war on gambling. During a parliamentary inquiry into online gambling, which is being conducted in relation to his legislation to restrict and ban forms of the activity, he called out Sportsbet and the practice of using commissions.

During the parliamentary inquiry, Cormac Barry, the CEO of online betting agency Sportsbet.com.au, admitted that his company pays millions to third parties to refer gamblers to them. Barry said that they paid between $3 million and $4 million per year in commissions to businesses and individuals who refer new clients to them. They would network at racing clubs and different gambling circles and then refer gamblers to Sportsbet.

During the inquiry, Barry said that those clients who were referred to Sportsbet were not told that commissions were paid on the referral. That could be in violation of Australian laws against deceptive conduct. Senator Xenophon asked Barry if he broke any laws by not disclosing the commissions. Barry said “I’m not familiar with that particular piece of legislation.”

Different states have different laws regarding the matter, which is why Xenophon has decided to take on the issue at the federal level. He said that he intends to add a ban on betting commissions to his online gambling legislation. Senator Alan Tudge, who is co-sponsoring Xenophon’s bill, said that the practice is “immoral, unconscionable and should not continue. We need to take action to break this business model.”

Barry said that paying commissions for referrals is common practice. Sometimes the referrer gets a “finder’s fee,” while at other times they “can gain a share of revenue from the customer, so an affiliate share.”

What if online gambling had a do-over? What if you could play for real money but have no chance of negative consequences? You could have the chance of winning but with no risk of losing! That sounds like a pipe dream, I’m sure, but legislation has been proposed in Australia that would do exactly that.

Nick Xenophon, an independent senator, has proposed legislation that would allow Australian citizens to void losing bets at online casinos or online poker rooms. If you lose, simply cancel the transaction and keep your wager. If you win, you keep the money. Who says there’s no such thing as a sure thing in gambling?

Of course, there is a major problem with that plan. The casino operators simply couldn’t handle the losses they would incur. If players could keep all winning transactions but void any losing bets, that would basically turn the casinos into giant ATMs, except the players would be withdrawing money belonging to the casino, rather than their own money. The casinos would lose too much money and would have to move out of the Australian market, blocking customers from the nation from playing at the website.

And that is exactly the plan. You see, Senator Xenophon isn’t a Santa Clause type of guy who wants to give these great presents to online gamblers. Far from it. He is an anti-gambling fanatic. With his help, the Australian government passed a law banning Internet gambling, but that hasn’t prevented the citizens from playing. This legislation is another attempt to end the activity in Australia. Since they can’t make the players decide not to play at the casinos, they need to give the casinos an incentive to block those players. If this bill becomes law, that’s exactly what would happen.

Australia’s currently unregulated online gambling market is coming under fire from multiple angles. There are those who want to step up prohibition efforts while others want to do away with the status quo and regulate the industry for the protection of the citizens.

Andrew Wilkie, an independent politician who chairs a committee for gambling reform, told The Sunday Age that there was “clearly a need to reform.” He referred to the current state of the industry as being like the “Wild West.” The Interactive Gambling Act of 2001 banned all forms of online gambling except sports betting, but the law goes largely unenforced. Most of the gambling websites where the citizens play are located overseas, outside the jurisdiction of Australian authorities.

Wilkie thinks the current situation is unsafe, feeling that there is nothing in place to protect minors and problem gamblers. To illustrate his point, he tells horror stories about people who have lost their homes due to gambling debts. Still, while politicians like Senator Nick Xenophon favor stepping up prohibition efforts, Wilkie isn’t so sure that is the way to go. Wilkie said he was “not automatically lining up with Nick Xenophon on this” issue and wants to keep an open mind regarding gambling. Instead of prohibition, which hasn’t worked yet, Wilkie thinks it may be best to have the government legalize and regulate the industry so they can provide the protection he believes the industry is currently lacking (whether or not that is true is another story).

Currently, Wilkie’s committee is looking at the idea of making pre-commitment schemes mandatory for poker machines. After dealing with that issue, he expects the committee to focus on online gambling and how to deal with the industry. Xenophon, who is also a member of the committee, has proposed legislation that would prohibit Australian credit card companies from processing transactions for online gambling.

A recent report states that Australia’s government could begin a system of mandatory Internet filtering by 2013. Since at least 2005, the Australian government has tried to censor the Internet, all in the name of protecting society from such immoral and harmful things as pornography and online gambling. Sure, they often cite “child pornography” as an example, but the government is just using kiddie porn, something nobody would be opposed to censoring, as a means of getting their foot in the door.

From Liberal Senator Guy Barnett in 2005 to the current Labor Party, where Stephen Conroy is leading the Internet censorship offers, it has always been clear that online gambling and any sort of “adult” material – not just kiddie porn – is in the crosshairs. A close look at the films, TV shows, magazines and video games that have already been banned clearly shows that motive.

Now they are after the Internet, what most people consider the last remaining form of mass communication completely free of oversight and censorship – the last truly free form of mass communication. Previous attempts to require all Internet Service Providers (ISP) to filter and prohibit access to Refused Classification (i.e. banned) websites have been shot down, but they are still trying.

The government hopes to have a mandatory ISP blocking program in place in 2013, under the direction of the Department of Broadband. In the meantime, the government is giving $8 million in incentives to ISPs to encourage them to take part in the blocking of Refused Classification content on a voluntary basis.

Before passing a law making that content filtering mandatory, the government has asked the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General (SCAG) to review the proposed Internet filtering legislation. The review is expected to take at least 12 months, followed by a series of meetings with lawmakers on how best to implement the system. Recommendations would then be made in 2012, with a bill coming to Parliament by the middle of 2013.

All of this, of course, is in the name of protecting society from dangerous information on the Internet, just as they protect people from having to see Johnny Depp movies featuring “graphic” sex scenes or magazines with titles like DD Bra Busters. All of this morality seems odd coming from a country that was founded as a British penal colony.

Conroy, the Communications Minister, seems to think that people innocently surf the Web and are suddenly attacked by unwanted online casinos, pornography and more. The truth is, people only find those things if they are looking for them. While I find some pornography distasteful (really, who likes preggo midget porn?), I find censorship even more distasteful. The government wants to protect the people from the evils of the Internet, but it is more important to protect the people from the evils of the government.

Australia’s Productivity Commission says that the federal government needs more control over the gambling industry. That shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. The Productivity Commission is an independent research and advisory board appointed by the Aussies’ federal government. So an entity appointed by the federal government and asked by the federal government to study the gambling industry finds that the federal government should run it? Hmm…

The Australian Productivity report on gambling has come out and they say that the federal government should take the regulatory authority away from the individual states and handle it themselves. They also advocate placing a 2% tax on all gambling revenue. The federal government could also offer “incentive payments” to the states to reduce their “reliance” on slots tax. Those payments are supposed to be to help wean the states off of gambling income rather than cutting it off abruptly, though some people see the idea as bribery.

All of that is troubling to people who advocate small federal government and local governments taking care of as much as possible for themselves. It gets worse, though. The report also suggests establishing a national player tracking system so the federal government can detect “abnormal or risky playing patterns.”

Gee, do you think that’s something that could be abused? The concept behind that idea is that Australian citizens are incapable of taking care of themselves and making sure they don’t spend too much money at the casinos. Therefore, the government has to monitor them and step in if they think the gambling is becoming a problem, if they are betting too much money, or just being irresponsible.

The new government system would allow the federal government to track all money spent on gambling by the citizens, how much money they spend, where they spend it, how much they win or lose, what games they are playing and more. The potential for this financial espionage to be abused is enormous. Of course, the government playing the role of Big Brother isn’t new. Look at their internet censorship history, which, though not as bad as China’s, is exceptionally bad when you consider that – unlike China – Australia is supposed to be a free country.

Here at Gambling Review, I support gambling expansion. However, I’m hoping that Australia’s federal government doesn’t listen to the suggestions of the Productivity Commission.

Well, iPhone applications are causing a fuss again. This time isn’t not an app for shaking a baby or snorting cocaine, though. This time it’s about gambling.

Australian parliamentarian Nick Xenophon is outraged about poker iPhone apps that allow children to play the popular card game, betting fake money. He says the apps should be banned because they teach children to gamble at an early age and could lead to gambling addiction.

Citing concerns that it would get children used to the idea of playing poker for money, he said that “kids can become poker machine experts years before they are legally allowed to set eyes on a real machine.” In Australia, you must be at least 18 years of age to place a bet in any of their casinos.

The iPhone apps addressed by Xenophon are applications that have been endorsed by some of the big-name online casino companies. Though the games are free and you only gamble with play money, Xenophon worries that it could develop a pattern and teach kids that playing poker is a good way to make money. He said that the iPhone apps are “a training application for kids to lose real money when they turn eighteen.” Most of the apps do not have age restrictions.

Though he would like to ban them outright, Xenophon acknowledges that removing access to them in the country may not be possible. As a more realistic goal, he intends to push for legislation that would make it illegal to provide the iPhone gambling apps to children.