Inside Asian Gaming

IAG JUN 2023年6月 亞博匯 56 As evidence, when the Casino Control Act in the State of Victoria, Australia, was enacted in 1991 it was 97 pages long. It is now 277 pages and there is still just one casino in Victoria. Even more frightening is theGambling Regulation Act which regulates all the non-casino gambling in Victoria. When enacted in 2003, it was the largest piece of legislation ever passed by the Victorian Parliament, coming in at 630 pages. It is now almost double the size at 1,182 pages without any additional gambling products having been allowed since that law’s original enactment. It is obvious that the recent behavior of Australia’s major casino operators, Crown Resorts and Star Entertainment Group, has given governments and regulators no choice but to act. However, don’t expect anyone to check whether the changed policy settings that follow the Bergin, Finkelstein and other inquiries will do anything to ameliorate gambling harm. They might, but we may never know. It is not just the political wing of governments who fear review. About 20 years ago, the CEOs of all Australian state and New Zealand gaming regulators thought about undertaking a benchmarking exercise to examine each jurisdiction’s relative performance. The idea was to evaluate tasks we all undertook such as speed of licensing and cost efficiency. The idea was met with some enthusiasm until one of our group realized that it would produce a performance “ladder”. That would have been fine for whichever jurisdiction were to come out on top, but it would be an absolute PR disaster for whoever ended up at the bottom. I can only imagine COLUMNISTS