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Australian "No- Pokies" MP Takes Stand Against Mobile Phone GamblingThe Australian government minister Nick Xenophon, known across the country for his "No- Pokies" campaign against video poker machines, has taken a stand against a different kind of gambling.MP Xenophon has criticized a new gambling scheme, based in Adelaide, whereby people engage in gambling by sending text message bets on their cellular phones. The MP maintains that this new type of gambling encourages young people to partake in the activity. "[W]hen you consider that for young people [the cell phone is] their most accessible, most widely used piece of technology, the potential for young people getting bitten by this is enormous," said MP Xenophon. He also believes that problem gambling addicts are especially vulnerable to betting via mobile phones, since they are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. "Essentially it allows you to use your mobile phone to place a bet, any time, 24-7, using your mobile phone in a way that hasn't been the case before, and the fear, from problem gambling experts, is that this will lead to increased problem gambling," said MP Xenophon. "We know from the Productivity Commission report of several years ago that the more accessible the form of gambling is, the more instantaneous it is, that it will cause increased levels of problem gambling. That's why the pokies are the biggest problem. But now having this particular technology used in this way is a great concern," he added. MP Xenophon has written to the Federal Communications Minister, Helen Coonan, to ask her to step in and take action against this new relatively new form of gambling. He believes that the Australian government has allowed too many illegal forms of gambling to fall through the cracks. "[We] need to revisit the Interactive Gambling Act. It's time that it was reviewed, it's time that there was a tightening up so that it's there to do what it's meant to do," he said. "With emerging technologies such as this there is scope, considerable scope, for the legislation to be amended so that we can actually have legislation that works; it's doing what it was meant to do." The anti- gambling MP believes that Australian states, some of which take in as much as $4 billion Australian Dollars each year, need to gradually become less dependent on taxes from gambling. He called gambling revenue "fool's gold when you consider the enormous social impact the people who lose their businesses, their homes, whose families break up, who go to jail because of their gambling addiction. It just isn't worth it in terms of the revenue that's raised." The manager of the text message betting service called the MP's comments "typical Nick Xenophon," and accused him of electioneering.
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