Star Casino bosses turned blind eye to misery

The Bell report into Star Entertainment paints a damning picture not just of the company’s failure to control money laundering but its indifference to the human cost on patrons who could least afford it.

Independent Casino Commission chief commissioner Philip Crawford. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Nikki Short

Not long after their first child was born, Charles became concerned when his wife began going to The Star casino “for a night out”, leaving him with their son. Soon she was staying for more than 24 hours at a time, and would ultimately gamble away more than $1m of the family’s savings.

“She spent so much money and time at the casino that she was given membership to the Sovereign Room,” Charles says. “She has never acknowledged that she has a gambling addiction.”

The more than 1000-page Bell report into Star Entertainment paints a damning picture not just of the company’s failure to control money laundering by high-rollers but its indifference to the human cost on patrons who could least afford it.

Before September 16 last year, Star only required intervention for patrons who had gambled for 24 hours continuously, and that person could not be considered a risk if they had a six-hour break, the report’s author, Adam Bell SC, wrote.

“The effect of this was that if a patron had gambled for 18 hours, that fact in and of itself could not be considered to deem the patron a responsible gambling risk,” Mr Bell found.

Another respondent to the ­review, Beatriz, said her husband had begun secretly gambling at the casino after taking up a job in Sydney. Within eight months, he confessed to having lost all of his earnings, plus the family’s savings. “I was devastated to learn that we were in the negative ­financially, though we both earned nearly $250k together and my needs and expenses were very minimal,” she said.

Star Entertainment’s egregious lack of harm-minimisation capacity led Mr Bell to call for pre-registered cashless gaming cards to become compulsory for all gambling at The Star casino.

Any gaming card should collect data about the patron’s gambling habits which they would be able to access; while pokies would be unable to be used for three hours continuously without a 15-minute break. In addition, any card should enable patrons to be identifiable and for their ­exclusion status to be enforced, if required.

Philip Crawford, the new chief commissioner of the newly established Independent Casino Commission, handed down the report on Tuesday, labelling the findings “shocking” as he took aim at the company’s management.

Mr Crawford said executives had paid “scant regard” to harm minimisation.

NSW Gaming Minister Kevin Anderson said Star Entertainment’s “flagrant disregard” of gaming rules and regulations was “outrageous”, but refused to say whether the government would accept all of Mr Bell’s recommendations, nor whether it would support a gambling card. “The people of NSW expect that casinos should operate at the highest standards. It’s very clear that Star has not been doing that,” he said.

As he offered bipartisan support for any legislative changes required, Opposition Leader Chris Minns also declined to commit to implementing a gambling card, saying he would wait to see Star Entertainment’s ­response to the review.

“I’m not going to make a policy announcement in relation to that. But, obviously, everything needs to be on the table in order to ensure that gambling has the public’s confidence,” he said.

The recommendation comes just months after former gaming minister Victor Dominello was dumped from the portfolio in the midst of his push to implement cashless pokies cards across pubs, hotels and clubs in a bid to combat problem gambling and the use of pokies to launder money.

Mr Dominello faced fierce ­resistance from lobby groups.