It is an important project for Annastacia Palaszczuk and her deputy Steven Miles,who have used every opportunity to talk up the promised 2000 construction jobs,8000 ongoing jobs and $880 million in “guaranteed” casino taxes over the first 10 years.
Not so public are the cost-benefit analyses,community impact statements or the amount of money,if any,Queenslanders scored for the 26 hectares of prime public land leased for 99 years to the consortium.
Fentiman on Friday,couching her $100 million punishment of Star in terms of “the public interest”,cited “commercial-in-confidence” as the reason for not releasing this information.
The secretive project,at $3.6 billion-and-counting,now has a principal partner (Star,50 per cent) deemed unfit to run casinos and a secondary partner,the Hong Kong-based Chow Tai Fook (25 per cent),the subject of an Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation investigation because of its questionable international associations.
Star’s main competitor,Crown Resorts,has also been found unfit to hold its licences in Sydney,Melbourne and Perth. Victoria fined it a total of $200 million for various reasons,including irresponsible oversight of problem gamblers. Western Australia went with $120 million. NSW authorities granted the brand-new Crown Barangaroo a conditional licence in June after Crown overhauled its board and procedures. Crown has since been bought out by US private equity group Blackstone.
AUSTRAC is also taking legal action against Star,Crown and Adelaide’s SkyCity.
In October,after Robert Gotterson released his report showing Star’s Queensland operations to be a mess ofcover-ups,greed and manipulation,Monash University gambling researcher Dr Charles Livingstone correctly predicted Queensland would appoint a special manager,hand down a fine and use tough language. (“Everyone says ooh ah,but it’s a get out of jail free card,” he said at the time.)
Livingstone said an outright expulsion of Star would mean renegotiating the QWB deal and potentially losing billions of taxpayer dollars to compensation payments,not to mention political skin.
He said the $100 million fine imposed instead was not insignificant,but Star’s deep pockets could absorb it.
“I mean,these guys are all incapable of running a casino,yet they still are,” he said of the Star and Crown operations.