The Australian government’s Productivity Commission into online gambling currently conducting hearings in Sydney considered some interesting suggestions this week, among them a few from anti-gambling politician Senator Nick Xenophon.
Xenophon suggested that not enough was being done to constrain online gambling in Australia, and that gamblers could stop paying losses to illegal gambling sites, a concept quickly rejected by Aussie-based online gambling company Betchoice. The gambling company pointed out that it would be too hard to distinguish between an illegal and legal online service.
The Senator is concerned that mobile technology could herald a significant increase in Internet wagering and associated problem gambling, and he wants gamblers who lose money on illegal online sites to be able to ask their bank to void the credit card transaction, reports ABC News.
Xenophon also underlined the importance of online sites having technology that enables players to specify how much they were going to gamble beforehand, opining that these measures would greatly reduce problem gambling.