Excellent! Thanks.

That link led me straight to the final verdict. It is NOT illegal for any of us Australians to play poker online but it MAY be illegal for poker sites to offer the service to us!

Clearly that is their problem and not ours. From my own experience Party Poker, Empire Poker and Pacific Poker at least are happily offering their services to Australians and obviously feel they are either not flouting Australia law or don't give two hoots anyway. (And good on them in my opinion!)

It could be that they are simply willing to take the risk and see whether the Australian Government prosecute. After all, how would our government run such a prosecution? Would it have to be through some international criminal court? Would such a court agree that Australian law can be applied to companies based outside Australia? What would happen if Party Poker and others just ignored the summons and kept on trading? Who would come and arrest their executives? The UN? :-)

To me the Australian Interactive Gaming Act is like the demonstration by King Canute of telling the tide not to come in. It has no hope of isolating Australians from the rest of the world. Are they going to arrest everyone who provides online poker? If there is a demand and a supply and the supply is not even physically in the country then I think the Australian Government are fighting a hopeless and in any case stupid battle.