Gambling
Related Essays and Reports by Andrew W Scott
Second
casino for New South Wales?
JUne
17th 2007
I
was astonished to read this
story in today's SMH, stating that negotiations
only began last week for Star City's exclusivity to
operate a casino in NSW. In fact talks between Tabcorp
and the NSW Government have been going on for a
while.
Sydney
Harbour Casino Pty Ltd (later to become Star City)
was awarded twelve years exclusivity from the date
of opening the Temporary Casino. I remember that day
well, because I was there. It was 13 September 1995,
and the doors opened to the public at 6pm.
The
casino's exclusivity period therefore expires this
September. Everything to do with Star City is supposed
to be on the table, including exclusivity rights and
tax rates.
In
my view a second casino or perhaps a boutique card
room to specifically deal with the poker boom would
be a great thing. I believe a major factor explaining
the arrogance of Australian casinos is the lack of
competition. Each State and Territory Government is
beholden to its casino because of the enormous revenue
that casino raises for them, in the order of around
$600 million a year country-wide.
If
the NSW casino tax revenue was spread around amongst
a number of casinos that truly had different ownership,
the NSW Government might feel more able to withdraw
or suspend the license of a casino that breaks the
rules. So far, despite numerous breaches by Star City
that have been well documented, there has been no
threat to the license. There is simply too much money
involved.
If
we had more than one casino, there would be a role
for the ACCC. It could be charged with the task of
ensuring that the casinos truly competed with each
other and didn't collude to offer bad games to the
players. Imagine a renegade operator, operating a
small boutique style casino, offering games with house
advantages much smaller than the price gouging we
are currently seeing. That would give the punters
a fighting chance.
©
2007 Andrew W Scott
andrew@andrewscott.com
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