State law decides what stands on a pub or club floor: machine numbers, trading hours, cash limits, self-exclusion. None of it reaches an offshore casino website, which answers to one federal law, the Interactive Gambling Act 2001. The table shows what each state controls and what stops at the state line; the casino list below it is the same for all six, because no state has online rules of its own. The 4 casinos carrying an Editor rating rather than a Provisional one are the ones we have deposited at and withdrawn from ourselves; the rest are rated from published terms, licence checks and complaint records.
| State | Regulator | What the state controls, and where it stops |
|---|---|---|
| New South Wales NSW | Liquor & Gaming NSW, with the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority | New South Wales has more pub and club poker machines than the rest of Australia combined, but none of the rules that govern them reaches an offshore site. |
| Queensland QLD | Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation, Department of Justice | Queensland has more pub and club poker machines per adult than any state except New South Wales: about 9.2 per 1,000 adults against 13.1. Online is governed federally instead. |
| Victoria VIC | Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission | Victoria enforces a $100 load-up limit on every poker machine in the state from a central monitoring system. Online there is no such system and no such limit. |
| Western Australia WA | Gaming and Wagering Commission of Western Australia | Western Australia bans poker machines outright: not just in pubs and clubs, but at Crown Perth too. Online casino games are federal territory and fall outside that ban. |
| South Australia SA | Consumer and Business Services, through the Liquor and Gambling Commissioner | South Australia scans faces at the door of every large gaming room to catch barred players. An offshore casino does not know who you are and has no list to check you against. |
| Tasmania TAS | Tasmanian Liquor and Gaming Commission | Tasmania is the only state where a poker machine in a pub or club cannot take a banknote at all. Online, the cashier takes whatever your card allows. |
Each row is what the state writes into its venue licences. An offshore casino holds no such licence, so none of it binds the site, and a venue self-exclusion order stops at the venue door.
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