Inside Asian Gaming

IAG MAR 2021年3月 亞博匯 66 COLUMNISTS P iling on the Victorian gambling regulator in the wake of the NSW Casino Inquiry is unambiguously de rigueur . Countervailing views do not get traction. After all, why bring attention to measured critical analysis and rebuttal when you can excite intrigue and scandal? We all appreciate the media lens exaggerates a preferred, if often flawed narrative, and it seems more so when the protagonists are James Packer, Crown Resorts, the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation (VCGLR) or gambling at large. Demonizing Crown and sensationalising its past, but not insignificant, corporate governance and AML/ CTF failures is irresistibly fashionable, as it seems are harsh assessments of the Victorian regulator. A difficulty I have with this unthinking and frenzied narrative, aside from its lack of reasoned andmeasured perspective and, on one view, its disingenuous exaggeration of shortcomings relative to staggering failures in other sectors, is its frail grasp of gambling and AML/CTF legislative and regulatory arrangements. An informed understanding of federal and state regulatory and law enforcement arrangements and responsibilities as they relate to anti-money laundering oversight and gambling regulation ought to be a precondition for emphatic commentary. The mob of newly minted casino and anti-money laundering regulatory experts rush to chasten the regulator and Crown for alleged inaction or ineptitude and decree with remarkable certainty the measures necessary to redeem robust casino oversight. These bald pronouncements comply with the narrative and are amplified in the media but fall awfully short of cogent assessment and criticism. Regrettably, instead of examining the efficacy of the NSW gambling regulator and the conduct and