DUCKVILLELOL

G'day Mr Rudd, 3 important questions:

1) What's your favourite Aussie beer? (Name/brand, where you first had it if possible)

2) As an Aussie who's in (what I feel to be) a slightly "irrelevant" area of the voter base - 25-35 age, no kids, just doing my office job 9-5, nothing too snazzy - what would you suggest to not fall into an apathetic state regarding Aus Federal politics?

NBN is in the toilet, some parts of the digital future/economy are also going in that direction and many things that I (and perhaps others in my similar demographic) try and get involved in all fall by the wayside and I'm getting a similar sense that I had a long time ago regarding politics. For a while, yourself and Mr Ludlam were bringing me back into the fold and making it interesting; but your sauce bottle was unfortunately shaken, and Mr Ludlam was obviously the victim of an archaic, ridiculous rule from the constitution (though, even as a big fan I do concede it was his own lack of compliance with that problem).

3) Would you rather fight 100 duck sized horses or 1 horse sized duck?

Hi Scott, love your work, your great speeches in the Senate, and your hair.

My question relates to the world of video games - particularly the rapidly-growing competitive esports world (which sadly Australia is lagging vastly behind in) - with relation to minors using gambling websites.

Over the course of the last few years - particularly this last 12 months - a number of "video games-related" gambling sites have popped up where gamers can gamble/bet items for a bit of fun. Of course, these items have to come from somewhere - a bit of cash of course. A problem has started to pop-up across the globe where minors are using these sites, getting sucked in, and are dropping a lot of cash down the toilet.

For me personally I think that the parents letting the kids use hundreds, thousands of dollars like that should be more careful, but I'm not a parent so I don't know the rigours of parenting and I'm sure some kids find a way to do it sneakily.

The huge issue with this is that it's tough to knuckle down on as there's no real precedent or way to crack down and enforce rules for these (largely) overseas websites. Do you believe that this ties in with the overall theme of gambling addiction and can be dealt with through conventional gambling approaches, or are there ways that the government (perhaps though this Digital Rights Commissioner which looks great) can step in somehow?

Cheers mate

I'm not exactly sure what you're asking. Are you asking what the sites are that allow the online gambling that are related to esports or are you asking if online poker is esports?

True and I agree with that idea; however my concern is mainly about minors gambling. So regardless of the discourse at hand - it's something to be worried about. Minors (at least from my view) seem to be far more susceptible to gambling conditioning and addiction. That said - no one is immune. The only reason I've specified this particular "region" of gambling is that it's an industry I'm involved in and care about, and affects those most vulnerable.