Past sins haunt Crown’s bid to win high rollers back

As scandal-racked gambling behemoth Crown Resorts tries to establish a “new normal” under its new-ish US private equity owner Blackstone, a tentative dip back into the world of high rollers is under way.

The gospel according to new Crown chief executive Ciarán Carruthers.Credit: John Shakespeare

The operator of Crown casinos gave CBD the rundown on Monday of how a new “rolling chip premium player program” will operate at its Sydney and Melbourne venues (but not in Perth, where state government regulations say no), with the scars of the company’s recent past plain for all to see.

First: no junkets – as promised by Crown chief executive Ciarán Carruthers when he took the job last year. Players will be background-vetted and must deal directly with Crown, not through middlemen. Seems sensible given some of the history.

Second: no direct marketing into overseas markets. (Let’s not mention all that unpleasantness with the Chinese authorities locking up a bunch of Crown employees a few years ago.)

Access to the program – which includes only baccarat – will be limited to players from interstate and a restricted number of overseas countries. The company wouldn’t tell us which countries were on the list, but China most definitely is not.

So, lots of rules but no guarantee that high rollers will bring their dollars back to Barangaroo and Southbank, especially in a tough international casino market.

And no end in sight to Crown’s quest to put its troubled recent past behind it.

TERF WARS

The corridors of Parliament House have been host to no shortage of lobbyists over the years. On Monday, it was the leading lights of Australia’s small but angry anti-trans movement who gathered in the big house to voice their concerns about the alleged threat to women’s sport and the Orwellian horrors of gender pronouns.

The event, titled Why Can’t Women Talk About Sex, was hosted by Liberal senator Alex Antic and got off to a shambolic start. For the first 10 minutes, the broadcast on Alan Jones’ streaming service ADH TV had no sound. It meant viewers missed an introductory speech from Country Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, taking a break from her No campaign duties.

It also meant the opening salvo from failed Warringah Liberal candidate Katherine Deves, who had MC duties for the brief event, were lost to the ether. The sound returned midway through a speech from Kirralie Smith, formerly an anti-Halal food campaigner.

Katherine Deves speaks at Why Can’t Women Talk About Sex, as Moira Deeming (second right) watches on.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Angie Jones, behind the infamous Let Women Speak rally in Melbourne that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis, attacked “dishonest” Victorian Premier Dan Andrews and Opposition Leader John Pesutto, adding some comments about trans people too inflammatory for this column.

The star attraction was exiled Victorian Liberal MP Moira Deeming, who in a brief speech called out the “ridiculously terrible treatment” Deves received during the 2022 election, where her tweets about trans children were widely reported.

“She was used like a human shield, all alone, and no one came to back her.”

Clive Palmer’s $110 million senator Ralph Babet (famously not a woman) rounded things out with a barnstorming call to arms, framing the debate around trans issues as “a battle between good and evil”.

HOSPITAL PASS

The Rugby World Cup in France is still in its very early stages, but an unlikely winner has emerged – Australia’s wildly profitable private health insurance funds, not that they were in desperate need of good fortune.

The research team at Macquarie has uncovered an “uncanny correlation” between World Cups and lower volumes of private health insurance claims, according to a research note for the bank’s private clients that made its way onto CBD’s desk on Monday.

World Cup is try time for private health insurance funds.Credit: Getty

Macquarie reckons it’s all those privately educated, rugger-loving surgeons dropping their masks and gowns and heading for the tournament, leading to fewer procedures being performed and claimed for – and it’s making a difference to the funds’ bottom lines.

Macquarie’s analysis shows growth in claims inflation slowing by 3 per cent during Rugby World Cup months over the past nine years, leading to a bottom-line boost of more than .07 per cent on funds’ half-year results. It’ll be a bit more this year, owing to the tournament going a week longer than usual.

That’s a handy little earner for an industry that recorded combined profits of $2.2 billion in the most recent reporting period.

And they didn’t even have to try.

HISTORY PICS

Back in 1967, George Lipman’s camera captured the defining image of that year’s referendum.

The picture of barefoot Indigenous boy Victor Hookey walking hand-in-hand with his white friend Mark Anthony down an inner Sydney back alley ran on the front page of the Herald days before the referendum.

On Monday, this masthead returned to the story of Hookey’s life, and that picture once again adorned the front page. According to his niece, seeing that spread thrilled Lipman, who turns 90 on October 14, the very same day as the Voice referendum. Couldn’t be more fitting.

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