Senator ALSTON (Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) (5:46 PM) —I think the shortest answer is that this bill is all about prohibiting interactive activities, particularly the new and exciting temptations that are likely to be coming online shortly. It is not about correcting the current problems that are essentially the responsibility of the states. We have always taken the view that we have clear constitutional power, under the telecommunications power, to deal with interactive activities in all their manifestations but that poker machines and their regulation are a matter for the states. It is true that technology now allows a number of things to occur in terms of linking poker machines—for data and monitoring purposes, for example, which can be quite helpful in assessing the activities. But linked jackpots, which I think is what you have in mind as the vice you seek to remedy, are really part and parcel of the way in which poker machines have evolved. It is very much open to the states to deal with the excesses of the poker machine business. We would certainly encourage them to do that, and we will be doing that through the ministerial council and elsewhere. But we do not believe that this act, which is essentially concerned with interactive gambling activities, should be used as a means of incidentally dealing with the offline old forms of gambling.