A Victorian Royal Commission into Melbourne’s Crown Casino has revealed the enormous amount of corruption that takes place within its walls. The royal commission found the Casino, owned by billionaire James Packer, has links to criminal gangs, repeatedly breached money laundering laws, and has exploited its casino licence by taking advantage of state tax deductions to cheat Victoria out of a potential $200 million. The report also found that the Casino had been taking advantage of people with gambling addictions, allowing some people to gamble for 50+ hours straight while desperately trying to win their money back.
Despite all this, Victoria has opted to renew Crown’s license and give it a two year ‘grace period’ to clean up its act as recommended by Commissioner and former Federal Court justice Ray Finkelstein, who delivered the final report. This ‘grace period’ will be monitored by a ‘special manager’ to ensure that the Casino adheres to Victorian law. The Victorian government has appointed Stephen O’Bryan QC for the two-year role after which he’ll deliver a report to the gaming regulator, who will determine whether or not the Casino should keep its license. In his capacity as special manager, O’Bryan will effectively act as a board member. He’ll be allowed to attend board and management meetings, inspect the books, and request any desired information from members of the company, and will be able to direct board decisions.
While this looks good on paper, it is difficult to imagine how a single person could monitor the entire situation given the sheer number of violations committed by the casino, particularly in light of Finkelstein’s comments that,
“It is difficult to grade the seriousness of the misconduct. Some [of the conduct] was so callous that it is hard to imagine it could be engaged in by such a well-known corporation whose Melbourne Casino Complex is visited by millions annually.”
But if one steps back and considers how a casino operates, it is not actually all that hard to imagine. A casino answers to their profit margin, not the average punter. As Victorian Greens leader, Samantha Ratnam correctly pointed out,
“The government has set Crown up as too big to fail, and then failed themselves to stop the corruption and gambling harms.”
Victoria is not the only state where this is happening. In Western Australia, a Royal Commission is underway in Perth over similar allegations, with Jamie Packer testifying at its hearing. This is the third time the Crown has been investigated in Perth. Packer admitted that there have been “too many oversights” while explaining that he hadn’t been to a single board meeting in almost four years and that the board had no written charter, which allowed it to operate as it pleased. As the hearing is still underway at the time of writing it is unclear if Perth will adopt a similar approach to Melbourne.
In NSW a Crown Casino was built in Sydney in 2020 on land originally intended as a public park, despite initially having its license refused in light of the Victorian and Western Australian Commissions. It has since been allowed a liquor license, but its gambling license is still on hold. An egregious example of the perceived importance of the project was that Packer and then-NSW premier Barry O’Farrell had come to an agreement to allow for the construction during a private lunch hosted in broadcaster Alan Jones’s apartment.
These legal violations are not anomalies; they’re woven into the very fabric of the way casinos operate. In the relentless pursuit of profits, any and all means will be employed to ensure the maximal gain with minimal risk for the casino, and vice versa for the punter, and the revenue that flows to the government coffers under such an arrangement seems to be more important than the means by which it is generated. This social laziness is in itself a form of corruption but is unlikely to be cauterised from the body politic anytime soon.
