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Local blow to Net betting
By BRENDAN NICHOLSON
Sunday 1 April 2001
The Federal Government paid former Bob Hawke adviser Richard Farmer $500,000 to set up an international Internet betting operation with a turnover of $350 million a year. Now it is trying to shut him down.
The export-market development grants he received from the Federal Government and the extraordinary scope of the Internet have given Mr Farmer's small Canberra-based telephone bookmaking firm, Canbet, a significant slice of the international legal betting market.
Most of the $350 million is placed with Canbet by American punters betting in US dollars on American sports such as gridiron, basketball and ice hockey.
Now Canbet is set to be closed or forced offshore by legislation that will make it illegal for Australians to gamble on the Internet with Australian companies.
Mr Farmer said he was considering moving Canbet to Vanuatu or to Britain, which is keen to hold on to the flow of foreign exchange through on-shore sites.
The government's announcement that it intends to ban Internet gambling was enough to halve the company's market value of around $36 million.
Mr Farmer said the plan to ban Internet gambling was absurd. Making a personal call to place a bet will still be legal, but using the same telephone line to send a bet via computer will not, he says.
"This is totally illogical."
Mr Farmer, himself a consummate political operator who ran several election campaigns for Mr Hawke, said this was just another example of wedge politics. It was a tactic by a government determined to claw back support, in this case from minority groups opposing gambling, by making it look as though it was tough on gambling generally, he claimed.
Ninety per cent of Canbet's business is done on the Internet. Ninety-three per cent of bets (about 95 per cent of turnover) come from abroad.
Mr Farmer said it would still be legal for Canbet to take bets from outside Australia but it would be the bookmaker's responsibility to stop someone in Australia placing a bet on the Internet. "If we inadvertently take a bet from an Australian, we're out of business," he said.
Local blow to Net betting
By BRENDAN NICHOLSON
Sunday 1 April 2001
The Federal Government paid former Bob Hawke adviser Richard Farmer $500,000 to set up an international Internet betting operation with a turnover of $350 million a year. Now it is trying to shut him down.
The export-market development grants he received from the Federal Government and the extraordinary scope of the Internet have given Mr Farmer's small Canberra-based telephone bookmaking firm, Canbet, a significant slice of the international legal betting market.
Most of the $350 million is placed with Canbet by American punters betting in US dollars on American sports such as gridiron, basketball and ice hockey.
Now Canbet is set to be closed or forced offshore by legislation that will make it illegal for Australians to gamble on the Internet with Australian companies.
Mr Farmer said he was considering moving Canbet to Vanuatu or to Britain, which is keen to hold on to the flow of foreign exchange through on-shore sites.
The government's announcement that it intends to ban Internet gambling was enough to halve the company's market value of around $36 million.
Mr Farmer said the plan to ban Internet gambling was absurd. Making a personal call to place a bet will still be legal, but using the same telephone line to send a bet via computer will not, he says.
"This is totally illogical."
Mr Farmer, himself a consummate political operator who ran several election campaigns for Mr Hawke, said this was just another example of wedge politics. It was a tactic by a government determined to claw back support, in this case from minority groups opposing gambling, by making it look as though it was tough on gambling generally, he claimed.
Ninety per cent of Canbet's business is done on the Internet. Ninety-three per cent of bets (about 95 per cent of turnover) come from abroad.
Mr Farmer said it would still be legal for Canbet to take bets from outside Australia but it would be the bookmaker's responsibility to stop someone in Australia placing a bet on the Internet. "If we inadvertently take a bet from an Australian, we're out of business," he said.