Remember When: Gold Coast MPs disagreed over the threat of the mafia on the planned casino

TWO leading Gold Coast National Party MPs gave conflicting views about the significance of a mafia threat to the Gold Coast’s future Jupiters Casino.

Flashback: Casino mafia threat fear

Gold Coast Bulletin, Tuesday May 18, 1982

TWO leading Gold Coast National Party MPs gave conflicting views about the significance of a mafia threat to the Gold Coast’s future Jupiters Casino.

Surfers Paradise MP Rob Borbidge told a southeast zone conference: “anyone who has any doubts should now accept that organised crime is a massive threat to this nation, to our way of life, our system of government and democracy itself”.
But Police Minister and South Coast MP Russ Hinze told the same conference “I am not a bit concerned about the mafia”.

Gold Coast Bulletin 1982, May 18.

Both men made their comments after one of Australia’s leading authorities on organised crime, Bob Bottoms, had explained the threat it posed to Queensland’s future legal casinos.

Mr Bottoms, who was guest speaker at the event, warned that one way the mafia would attempt to take over legal casinos was by spending millions of dollars to “corrupt people at the top”.

Mr Borbidge, who heard the speech, said he hoped it would give the Bjelke-Petersen Government renewed vigour to take action which would ensue “gutter-level” people, imported from interstate and overseas, would not be allowed to get a foothold in our casino.

But Mr Hinze, who arrived at the conference after Mr Bottoms’ speech, adopted the attitude that the state’s police, together with security measures planned for the casino, would be more than a match for organised crime.

However, he did not deny there were brothels in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley or “card games played among groups of ethnic people”.