The hall monitors at ACMA keep chest-beating over their apparent success in blocking illegal online casinos in this country.
Chaired by Nerida O’Loughlin, the Australian Communications and Media Authority has been flicking out press statements that spruik its accomplishments as a regulator in this realm. Sadly, it’s all a phony, with few, if any, accomplishments of this kind to actually report.
It hasn’t stopped them, however.
“More websites blocked to protect Australians against illegal online gambling,” went its latest claim of triumph, released on Wednesday. “ACMA blocks more illegal gambling websites,” screamed another headline from two months ago. And in a similar vein: “ACMA blocks more illegal offshore gambling websites.”
That last headline led a press release issued in November 2022 and, like the others, it tells the story of dastardly online casinos being banished from these shores. The problem is that many of them, perhaps most of them, haven’t been blocked at all.
Whether it’s Dundee Slots or Spin Fever or Richard Casino (the names of these sites range from outright corny to just shamefully unimaginative), or any of the 1011 organisations “blocked” since 2019, according to ACMA, most of these websites are still remarkably easy to access. No VPN or tricks required, just a Google search and a mouse click. You can try your hand at Elvis Frog, Big Catch Bonanza, or any number of digital fruit machines without trying hard.
All that ACMA seems to have done to block these sites is weakly request that internet service providers ban access for Australians. And clearly it’s not happening – perhaps for some outlier cases, but not those that ACMA is boldly claiming to have barred in the recent past.
What these press statements are perhaps achieving, however, is a spot of free publicity for these enterprises. ACMA didn’t respond to questions, but we in the media have a word for this type of misrepresentation. It’s called a goddamn beat-up.
Flying high and low
Anyone staggering to their seat aboard QF521 from Brisbane to Sydney on Thursday morning would have spotted Queensland Governor Jeannette Young and her entourage – a sizeable troupe that took up a third of the space in business class.
Young was seated in 1D with her husband Graeme Nimmo and two staff members nearby, the couple obviously shattered after attending Suncorp Stadium and witnessing Queensland’s State of Origin drubbing hours earlier.
And so imagine the surprise of those moving further down the cabin to find the all-conquering Blues coach himself, Michael Maguire, slumming it in economy behind the demarcating curtain. Our spy tells us that baggage handlers in Sydney threw up their hands in celebration when they spotted Madge’s glorious dome through the window on arrival.
Young was then spirited off the plane and out towards the international transfer path, so presumably the Guv was off somewhere – again. Paris, you’d think? She racked up $367,000 in domestic and international travel during FY23, including trips to Germany and the UK in the service of “promoting Queensland”.
Plenty of that going on in the Chairman’s Box at Suncorp, of course. ARL chair Peter V’landys extended invitations to Queensland Opposition Leader David Crisafulli and his family (and judging by polling published on Thursday in our sister paper, The Courier Mail, the Governor will probably be swearing in Crisafulli as premier in the coming months).
The actual Premier, Steven Miles, was probably relieved to sit back and watch someone else get smashed first, along with Anthony Albanese (with fiancee Jodie Haydon) and Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Official broadcaster Nine was represented by chair Catherine West and accident-prone CEO Mike Sneesby, who should be en route to Paris any day now for his torch relay caper. There, too, was the usual huddle of ARL commissioners – Kate Jones, Gary Weiss, Megan Davis and Wayne “Junior” Pearce – plus Titans co-owner Rebecca Frizelle, Sky News boss Paul Whittaker, our very own editor-in-chief Michelle Gunn, Courier-Mail editor Chris Jones, Foxtel chief executive Patrick Delany and Sky New Zealand chief Sophie Moloney.
Dining with Dutton
An email finds its way to us from Nadine Jones, director of an outfit called Enterprise Victoria. And no, we weren’t the intended recipient. “I am co-ordinating a very private fundraising dinner with Mr Peter Dutton to be held on Friday July 26,” it says. “There will be only 15 invited guests in attendance to this event with the cost to attend being $5000 plus GST, the location of the dinner will be in the CBD area.” Say what you will, it’s still cheaper than the fundraisers put on by Gina Rinehart for Dutton in Brisbane. Entry to those started at $14,000 a pop.
Uni’s blind eyes
Not to keep whanging on about the contorted standards of governance on display at the Australian Catholic University, but we really are talking about an institution that paid more than $1m to terminate the contract of an out-of-favour academic, Professor Kate Galloway – if only because her views on abortion jarred with those of the church. Is that how academic freedom works at ACU?
You’d imagine the wise council governing the university would consider some guardrails to prevent such a flagrant misuse of taxpayer funds in the future. Any functioning business would, right? It’s called accountability but, hey, at ACU, they do it a little differently.
ACU’s only guardrail is its Senate, an 18-member council chaired by chancellor Martin Daubney KC. The Senate’s response to these revelations has been nothing but a blind eye to what happened. Calls for an independent, external investigation into this shocking waste of money and breach of academic freedom were kicked into the long grass this week.
And who sits on this council? Deputy chair Virginia Burke is chair of Mercy Health. Peter Steer runs Mater Health. Ross Fox is the CEO of Catholic Education Canberra and Helen Cooney is a director at REST Super.
Presumably these people know how to at least spell the word governance. Would they accept this anti-transparent, outrageous waste of taxpayer funding at their own organisations? Do they care a jot for how commonwealth dollars are even spent at ACU?
Questions for their boards to consider, perhaps.
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