NSW’s circus act with Star won’t deliver real casino reform
Can the people of NSW have confidence its casino regulator is really up to the job?
After a string of stunning revelations from The Australian during the week, there has to be reasonable doubt hanging over the NSW Independent Casino Commission. It seems it has been more intent on chasing headlines than real reform.
Even the newest Star chair, Anne Ward, calls out the propensity of the NICC to rush to The Sydney Morning Herald to try to ambush the Sydney casino.
The NICC’s full-blown inquiry into Star was launched as the casino was barely one year into its reform efforts under chief executive Robbie Cooke.
But the inquiry is now fast turning to smoke and looks more like an expensive witch hunt merely designed to get heads on a stick – including Cooke’s.
The reason? The highly experienced chief executive and Star’s own experienced board questioned the accuracy and pushed back on parts of an assessment into the casino’s rebuild by the NICC’s hand-picked manager, Nick Weeks.
A cache of documents seen by The Weekend Australian sheds new light on the NICC narrative that Cooke and former Star chairman David Foster were acting out alone by rejecting some of the views of Weeks.
The documents were submitted as confidential evidence in the Bell inquiry, and most won’t see the light of day. It’s easy to see why – they don’t support the preformative act of the NICC.
Email exchanges prove that the entire Star board – including Ward – and Star’s law firm King & Wood Mallesons – were actively shaping and signing off and approving drafts every step of the way that Cooke was producing.
Despite distancing herself from the report during the Bell inquiry, Ward was the most active in providing additions to what she saw as mistakes from Weeks’ “frankly amateurish” report. Cooke took on all additions and changes, right up until the moment the Star reply was sent to the NICC. Wisely, he dropped the amateurish reference. It’s not the message aired by the lead counsel during the Bell inquiry.
And rather than take on any of the valid points in the forensic rebuttal, it was NSW’s casino regulator who went to war. NICC chairman Philip Crawford cut off communication with Star and announced he was rebooting the Bell inquiry – sparking yet another board clean-out.
Yet the confidential closing submission by the inquiry lead Casper Conde concluded there has been no laws broken, and no wrongdoing by the former CEO or the board. The inquiry’s own lead also recommended the casino needs time – years in fact – to properly rebuild itself and culture. But the NICC and the independent manager were not interested in real reform, instead pushing Star and Cooke to move at lightning speed.
It also ignored the progress Cooke and his board were making.
NSW badly dropped the ball on casino regulation in recent years. The two casinos in the state need to be run well and free of crooks.
To ensure this, there needs to be a strong regulator and a fair and transparent process. What we’ve seen so far from NSW is nothing more than a circus sideshow.
