I i'm also fully licensed & have OP certificate in Australia. I had the same problem I found that no matter what distance limit I entered I could only fly 500M so after some frustration, instead of trying to increase the distance by entering a larger number I simple turned off the distance...
After researching Lidar for UAV's I found that the laser used in Lidar equipment is (eye safe) so different to the laser pointer style. I cant remember the site I read it on but are similar to the units used in police speed guns.