CFD trading in some ways achieves the same things as a margin loans.
It allows to gear into shares to supercharge your profits or losses.
While CFD trading tend to be short term in anture margin loans are used for buy and hold investments.
One interesting difference between the two is the interest rates on finance. The interest rate on financing a long CFD positon is RBA cash rate plus 3% this is around 6.75%. This comapres to 8.55% on a margin loan. As you can see the differential is quite high so this is one advantage that CFD will have over margin lending.