A person with inside knowledge of the casino sector in Queensland said that the local regulatory body has been “asleep at the wheel” after it was revealed that the state’s watchdog has not prosecuted any casino operator in the state over the past five years.
Currently, the oversight of the four casinos in Queensland – Brisbane’s Treasury Casino, The Star Gold Coast, Cairns’ The Reef Hotel Casino, and Townsville’s The Ville Resort-Casino – has been carried out by the Office of Liquor and Gambling Regulation (OLGR). The Brisbane and Gold Coast casinos are being operated by Star Entertainment, which operating licence is expected to soon transfer to the AU$3.6-billion Queen’s Wharf casino that is still being built, while the casinos in Cairns and Townsville are each run by separate operators.
For the time being, there are 14 operating casinos in Australia, with the state of Queensland having more than any other state or territory in the country. However, some insider’s knowledge of the local casino industry revealed that the state’s regulator had failed. They shared that the Queensland gambling watchdog had clearly failed to detect, prevent and deter serious criminal activity that occurred across the state’s casinos and had failed to protect vulnerable players from gambling-related harm.
The whistleblower further noted that, lately, everyone’s focus had been on casino operators and their unlawful behaviour but, in reality, such poor corporate culture could only thrive in a weak regulatory environment.
No Regulatory Prosecution Faced by Casino Companies in Queensland, Whistleblower Says
According to figures provided by the Office of Liquor and Gambling Regulation for the past five fiscal years – from 2017/2018 to 2021/2022 – Queensland’s gambling regulator has not prosecuted any casino operators. Prosecutions, fines and warnings are some of the main enforcement actions available for the gambling regulator to choose from when it comes to serious casino breaches.
The only prosecution that has been successfully carried out by the regulatory body involved a casino employee of The Ville Resort Casino, with the person pleading guilty to taking advantage of another person as a result of fraudulent actions under the Casino Control Act. The casino employee was forced to pay an AU$800 fine.
Regulatory data further revealed that no casino company had faced a monetary penalty under the provisions of the local gambling laws over the aforementioned 5-year period, with the watchdog only issuing two infringement notices under the provisions of the Liquor Act last year. The Office of Liquor and Gambling Regulation was unable to say which casino companies had been fined, pointing out some confidentiality issues. Over the same period of time, it issued eight fines to casino staff members and 146 fines to casino patrons.
The past fine financial years have seen a total of 3,669 incidents reported to Queensland’s gambling regulatory body. As a result, the competent authorities have undertaken 281 investigations and have issued 522 warnings.
As revealed by the regulatory body itself, the most commonly reported breach is linked to matters involving minors entering the casino floor or casinos failing to maintain minimum staffing levels when it comes to supervision, security, and surveillance. The monetary penalties issued by the watchdog in such cases are usually worth a couple of hundred dollars.
- Author
Daniel Williams
