Crown Resorts has inauspiciously scored a regulatory hat trick after being declared unsuitable to hold a casino licence in three states - NSW, Victoria and now Western Australia. Today’s bigger question is whether Star Entertainment will join Crown in being found unsuitable.
Given what amounts to a Mexican wave of casino inquiries, Star would be bracing for a similar inquiry-style interrogation by the Queensland government/regulator given it holds two licences in that state.
Crown has escaped having the licence of its Burswood casino cancelled.Credit:Philip Gostelow
Crown’s unsuitability “threefer” might have seemed like long odds. The reality is that Crown’s chances of getting a suitability tick in West Australia were slim indeed.
Once the Bergin commission of inquiry found Crown unsuitable in NSW and the Finkelstein royal commission made the same finding in Victoria, Perth’s royal commission was always likely to follow suit. In other words, how could a casino company be found suitable to operate in one state jurisdiction and not in another.
None of these reviews recommended Crown lose the licence it was unfit to hold - counterintuitive as that is. Laws were broken, regulations were breached, money was laundered, it was infiltrated by organised crime, and problem gambling was not effectively monitored or addressed.
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Despite this laundry list of malfeasance, regulators and state governments instead took the rehabilitation stance against Crown. (And to be fair, after a complete hollowing out of the board and senior management and the construction of a Great Wall of China between the company and its largest shareholder James Packer, Crown has made strides to reinvent itself as a better corporate citizen.)
Victoria took the view that the state’s economy would suffer if Crown’s licence was confiscated. Certainly, the tax revenue that Crown generated for the state government’s coffers would have suffered. That argument always felt disingenuous given the casino licence could have been awarded to some other entity with less behavioral baggage.
Star Entertainment is now facing its own come to Jesus moment under the glare of a royal-commission style inquiry, which was triggered by reporting in The Age and the Herald