Betting heavy on anti-gambling candidate in Australia (Extra)

Sydney - Popular anti-gambling campaigner Nick Xenophon is vying for a seat in this weekend's parliamentary election in Australia - and a lot of gamblers are hoping the leader of the one-man No Pokies Party would soon be off to Canberra. Internet betting shop Portlandbet is taking bets galore that the former lawyer would make the transition to federal politics. Xenophon was elected to the South Australian state parliament in 1997 and re-elected in 2006 with more than 190,000 votes. His single-issue campaign for a federal seat is again about gambling and how the country has become host to 20 per cent of the world's poker machines and 120,000 of its problem gamblers. 'The last best hope to get massive and rapid change on the pokies is to push in the Senate for change - in Canberra where the federal government effectively controls the purse strings and has the power to act,' Xenophon said. The smart money is on a move from Adelaide to Canberra and Xenophon fulminating against gambling from an even bigger pulpit. © 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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Betting heavy on anti-gambling candidate in Australia (Extra)

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