Australia · 18+

Written for readers in Australia

An online casino is a prohibited interactive gambling service in Australia, and promoting one is an offence in its own right. This page names no operator and carries no link to one, and from the first of January 2027 the law will treat an advertisement as published here merely because it can be read here.

A prohibition with no list behind it

Australia answers the question that this site asks differently from Great Britain, and the difference changes what a page like this one is able to contain at all. There is no register of licensed online casinos to point a reader towards, because an online casino is a "prohibited interactive gambling service": the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 defines the service rather than licensing it, and the Australian Communications and Media Authority (the "ACMA") enforces that definition.

Sports betting is the exception to that, and it is a real one rather than a technicality (the "wagering" market is licensed, and licensed properly). Online wagering on sport is licensed at state level (by the state, not by the Authority), the Authority publishes the licensed bookmakers, and you can check an operator against that list in a minute, which is the one search worth making before anything else; casino games, poker and the slot machines fall on the other side of the line, and nothing in the licensed wagering market reaches across it (the licence covers wagering, and wagering alone).

What follows for a publisher is the shape of this page, and the shape is dictated by three sections rather than by an editorial choice of ours. The offence in sections 61BA, 61CA and 61EA reaches an advertisement "giving publicity to, or otherwise promoting" a prohibited service, including one published "on a website" (the words are in the Act), and the operators that this site lists for readers in Canada are prohibited services here (every one of them, without a single exception). There is therefore nothing we can show an Australian reader except the law and the help, which is what this page carries, and we would rather say so in one line than build a page that pretends to be useful to you.

What changes on the first of January 2027

The Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Act 2026 received assent on the twenty-sixth of August 2026, and all of its schedules commence on the first of January 2027 (the commencement table says "All Schedules", with that one date). Two of the changes matter to anybody publishing anything readable in Australia, and we have set them out in the order of their likely effect (the test first, the machinery second).

The first is the test of publication itself, which is the one that removes a publisher's territorial argument. A new section provides that an advertisement included or provided on an online content service "is taken to be published in Australia if the online content service is accessed, or is available for access, by an end-user in Australia", with a twin provision applying the same test to content in general (inserted into section 4). The argument that a foreign publisher could once make, namely that his site addresses another market, stops working on that date.

The second is the machinery that enforces it, and the machinery is new rather than borrowed. A new division creates "removal notices" with a twenty-four hour deadline, addressed to the online content service provider, to the hosting provider and, in the provision reaching a publisher most directly, to the "end-user" posting the advertisement on a service (section 61EI). A "link deletion notice" may be given to a search engine provider where users in Australia can reach the service through a link published here, and that provision reaches the "search results" a reader arrives by.

The penalties attached to non-compliance run to a thousand "penalty units", and to five thousand for publishing on a social media service, with a defence for a person having "took reasonable precautions, and exercised due diligence, to avoid the contravention". In our reading the twenty-four hour deadline is the part a small publisher should plan for, because it is shorter than most people's holidays.

The age, the help and the register that exists

The age is eighteen and it is the same in every state, which makes it the one simple fact on this page. The National Gambling Helpline answers on 1800 858 858 at any hour; and Gambling Help Online offers counselling by chat and by email as well as by telephone, free and across every state and territory (which is unusual, because most of the rest of this subject is state law).

BetStop is the national "self-exclusion" register, and its "scope" is worth knowing precisely, because it follows the shape of the law rather than the shape of a player's problem. It covers the licensed interactive wagering services, that is to say the sports betting market, and it does not cover an offshore online casino at all, an offshore online casino being no licensed service a register could list; a reader who wants to stop playing at a prohibited service has to ask that operator directly, which is a weaker remedy, and saying so is more use to him than pretending otherwise.

By the Canadian Dollar Casinos editorial team · Last updated October 2026 · Online since 2012