Online casino: Betting on New Zealand over Australia
New Zealand’s decision to license and regulate online casino gambling presents a rare instance of policy clarity in a domain often hindered by inertia and moral posturing. Where some jurisdictions continue to prefer prohibition despite its track record, Wellington has opted for evidence over optics. The Online Casino Gambling Bill, which passed its first reading in July and is now under detailed scrutiny by the Governance and Administration Committee, accepts a straightforward proposition: people will gamble online whether policymakers approve or not. Therefore, proportionate regulation, not slogans, is the credible path to protecting the public.
New Zealanders already spend around NZ$700m (US$392.2m) a year on online casinos, largely with foreign operators that pay no local tax, provide limited consumer protection and operate beyond domestic oversight. Prohibition has not prevented harm. It has displaced it offshore while diluting accountability and public revenue. Licensing does not sanctify gambling, but it restores the state to its proper role as designer and supervisor of the market it governs.
Set against Australia, the contrast is instructive. Successive governments have tended toward the comfort of prohibition even as total gambling spend reached AU$31.29bn (US$20.16bn) in 2023–24. Officials speak of harm minimisation and enforcement, yet the offshore market remains resilient. Independent analyses estimate an illegal offshore wagering segment of material size, with familiar consequences. Operators that are unburdened by tax or consumer-protection obligations undercut licensed providers, siphon activity overseas and erode confidence in the regulated system. The resultant policy is frequently more theatrical than it is effective.
New Zealand’s approach broadly aligns with regulatory thinking in the UK and parts of Europe, where legalisation coupled with firmer compliance frameworks has improved transparency and consumer safeguards. Even so, experience abroad indicates that black-market activity can persist for different reasons. More generally, unlicensed sites attract consumers with wider product choice, sharper odds, fewer frictions in verification and a marketing environment that can blur the line between legal and illegal. The underlying lesson is methodological: effective regulation turns as much on proportionality and clarity as on enforcement. Systems retain users when they are credible, competitive and trusted.
The contrast is sharper when viewed through online poker. Its continued prohibition in Australia sits uneasily alongside the country’s pervasive gambling environment, where wagering and lotteries are actively promoted and gaming machines are widely available under strict regulatory controls. Poker’s blend of skill and chance has long been recognised, including by the 2010 Australian Productivity Commission, which recommended the managed liberalisation of lower-risk online products such as poker. Jurisdictions in Europe have demonstrated that online poker can be regulated safely within strong compliance and harm-minimisation frameworks. Australia’s prohibition, by contrast, does not eliminate the activity; it merely displaces it offshore. Australian players continue to participate on unregulated platforms, without consumer protections, responsible gambling measures or contributions to public revenue. The issue is not opposition to gambling itself, but an unwillingness to govern it consistently.
Prohibition is often described as resolute. In practice it resembles withdrawal. The activity continues offshore, untaxed and unmonitored, while harms remain local. Digital markets are porous; moral boundaries rarely are.
Australia’s illicit tobacco market offers a parallel. Steep excise and expanding restrictions have widened the price gap between legal and illegal products, making the black market attractive to price-sensitive consumers. Enforcement has intensified, but the trade remains resilient and increasingly organised. The pattern is familiar: punitive policy generates scarcity and theatre, then shifts consumption beyond regulatory reach. The analogy is not perfect, but it is instructive.
From a public-law perspective, the question is not whether regulation is virtuous in the abstract, but whether it is designed and administered with institutional competence. Governance demands clarity of purpose, independent oversight and the humility to balance competing objectives in view of imperfect information. That is slow and sometimes uncomfortable work. Yet it invites scrutiny, improves transparency and strengthens the policy conversation over time. Where regimes are principle-based and supervisory judgments evolve, judicial articulation can also help stabilise expectations and enhance legitimacy – this is an observation that has particular salience in Australia’s AML/CTF setting: guidance often outpaces settled doctrine and issues remain untested in court.
New Zealand’s reform shows that gambling regulation can be disciplined and socially responsible. By calibrating market entry and mandating robust harm-minimisation programs, the proposed framework aims to be large enough to compete with offshore supply and small enough for meaningful supervision. This is not a liberalisation spree. It is a modernisation project grounded in the public interest.
The broader effect is coherence. Online operations are set to align with the principles that already govern casinos, lotteries and Tab wagering, replacing a patchwork of exceptions with a single regulatory philosophy. Australia should watch closely. Whether in gambling, tobacco or emerging digital markets, the strategic choice is constant: regulate intelligently or concede the field to illegality. Prohibition in mature markets is less prudence than pageantry; the costs fall on consumers and law-abiding businesses.
Regulation requires resolve. It asks governments to engage with complexity, accept scrutiny and withstand the criticism that follows any disturbance of settled interests. It cannot hide behind moral certainty or political safety. It must reconcile competing objectives in full view of the public. That is its strength. Regulation brings sunlight to contested spaces, builds accountability and allows policy to mature. New Zealand’s willingness to enter that terrain is more than a gambling reform. It is an assertion of responsible governance.
