Bedevilled antics against Tasmanian society
By Ricki Chavez-Munoz
Soon after Tasmania came into prominence, back in the 70s with the wild antics of the mischievous cartoon character The Tasmanian Devil, the island Australian State was all the rage in UK casinos as a working paradise destination for gaming people who had heard stories of the bounties to be had Down Under.
In those halcyon days of growing social concerns and upward mobility, no one asked the whys and wherefores of the working opportunities in the Australian gaming state – you don’t look in the mouth of a gifted horse.
Indeed, all expectations were on what casinos offered in Tasmania, along with cool lagers, gorgeous Sheilas and wall to wall sunshine. Only the operators and licensing authorities, one presumes, were dancing away like the cartoon character after a great result.
The casino business opportunity had come into the grateful hands of family-owned Federal Group as a monopoly, at a time when US mafia families were losing the casino battle in jurisdictions further north in the Atlantic and Caribbean, following the end of mafia king Bugsy Seagal’s empire ambitions in pre-revolutionary Cuba and the dispatch of other families’ ambitions in London with the approval of the Gaming Act of 1968.
Like a mafia backyard, the Tasmanian authorities gave away monopoly rights to a private company, and paradise was a reality for cousins of the cartoon character, in the fashion of 17th century potentates.
As the world totters into a post pandemic era, we hear that social responsibility has at last reached Tasmania and that ‘better late than bloody never’ as some outback salt of the Antipodean earth would put it, the casino monopoly is about to come to an end.
Or is it?
News also reaches this digital desk that the new gaming laws and regulations are being meddled with by monopoly operator’s interests. The question that comes to decent folk’s minds must surely be: Shouldn’t monopolistic interests be dead and buried Down Under like in the rest of the civilized world?
The feeble argument from the monopoly interests may be that with more than half a century gaming experience in Tasmania they are best placed to know most about the gaming industry in the State. The essential counter argument, however, is that business does not have an essential interest in regulating itself, and that anachronisms such as monopolies must be buried along with all those who profited from such privileges with truculent impunity.
Only once have I come across a good example of gaming self-regulating policies. That was in South Africa, when Sun International was almost alone in casino operations in the then so-called homeland territories of the Apartheid regime years. When equality came to the country, South Africa benefited from the expertise of Sun International’s gaming working policies to develop a modern gaming industry based on social and gaming responsibility regulations.
In Tasmania, James Boyce, a historian who has spent years investigating the links between the gaming lobby and the government, says the current gaming industry lobby to get regulations fashioned in the way it suits it best, along with other such situations, is a failure of democracy, adding:
“The situation in Tasmania exposes the fact that the depletion of our public services is directly connected to the vulnerability of our democracy and breakdown of the democratic process.”
As the world leaders begin to get serious about tackling the impending climate change disaster, another such problem that affects the world is corruption, which should be tackled with even greater vigour. Most business has very little interest in social responsibility and the Tasmanian gaming industry reflects that.
Tasmanian critics of the current gaming legislation shenanigans are asking for an enquiry into the controversial elements of the proposed gaming bill, and such enquiry should begin with investigating the assets of every politician who supports the interest of the gaming monopolists.
