Hooked, p.28
Hooked, page 28
The industry also weaved its way into mainstream TV. Channel Seven broadcast a program on greyhound racing called The Thrill of the Chase. They began showing ads from a wide range of big brand companies. In fact, 64 well-known brands that had aired ads on the program responded to a campaign conducted in the early 2020s by the Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds, which exposed the link between corporations and the greyhound industry. All complained that they had not sanctioned their advertising on the program and sought to dissociate their companies from the sport. The response to the coalition’s campaign from an ANZ spokesperson read:
I can confirm that any greyhound racing, horse racing or associated programs, are currently on a list of banned environments for ANZ advertising, which we share with our media partners like Channel Seven. Our media agency are currently following this up with the network to understand why our ad appeared during this program (both on 7mate and 7Plus) over the weekend, and to ensure that this doesn’t happen again in future.50
And from Unilever:
I would like you to know that our values are not aligned with greyhound racing or any other animal racing and by no means do we want Dove or any of our Unilever brands to be associated with this kind of sport.
Even the RSPCA found that its advertisements for its pet insurance product were being run during the show.
In at least some cases, the problem appeared to have been Channel Seven’s ‘bonus scheme’, which offered additional free ads but without any control from companies over their placement. Channel Seven’s role in this saga remains unclear, but there is more than a whiff of profits before ethics. All the companies responding to the Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds exposé said they had made it explicit to the TV station where they didn’t want their ads to appear, including any associated with greyhound racing and horse racing. Channel Seven’s management placed them on The Thrill of the Chase anyway.
In 2023, Ladbrokes also developed a financial relationship with the New South Wales Greyhound Breeders, Owners & Trainers Association. In striking the deal, Ladbrokes’ Australian CEO, Dean Shannon, said: ‘The industry has experienced some very tough times and I am proud that our company has stuck solid with clubs and participants through those and now they are moving forward in leaps and bounds.’51 Of course, the ‘tough times’ Shannon referred to were the controversies over animal abuse. Ladbrokes appeared to be giving the industry a guarantee of support despite its culture of cruelty.
TopSport’s Tristan Merlehan described the sport’s popularity as if animals themselves weren’t involved. There were varying reasons, he explained, for the growing popularity of the sport, ‘but there’s no doubt that the rapid nature of the product really resonates with punters’.52
In a sport with such a sordid history and culture, controversy was never far away. In 2020, the Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds analysed stewards’ reports for that year and found that 9681 dogs had suffered an injury, and that a dog had died every 1.6 days.53
The following year, the animal rights group Animal Liberation began reporting on the carnage associated with the Million Dollar Chase.
In 2023, Animal Liberation Tasmania released drone footage of the properties of several Tasmanian greyhound trainers. It showed greyhounds living in decrepit conditions on the properties of multiple trainers.54
The same year, the ABC obtained vision showing multiple greyhounds, including puppies, apparently being kicked and punched by a person on a property south-east of Adelaide. Labor premier Peter Malinauskas set up yet another inquiry into the sport; its report impelled him to threaten to ban the sport within two years if it didn’t clean up its act.
In August 2023, GRNSW revealed the self-interested commercialism that ran the industry. In an email headed ‘Dear Greyhound Participant’,55 the organisation responded to the findings of the House of Representatives’ Inquiry into Online Gambling and Its Impacts on Those Experiencing Gambling Harm. But GRNSW saw grave implications for the sport if the inquiry’s recommendation to ban inducements was enacted in legislation. Inducements such as free bets for new customers, bonus bets, rewards programs and matched deposits are designed to exploit vulnerable gamblers, either to entice them as customers or to encourage them to bet more and more often. GRNSW’s email claimed that the removal of these provisions would result in the loss of $90 million in revenue to racing in the state. This, it said, would eat up the organisation’s greyhound welfare, rehoming and safety programs.
In other words, GRNSW argued that its business model required maximising the exploitation of vulnerable gamblers through inducements to pay for greyhound welfare, which, if removed, would worsen the outcome for dogs. It’s hard to imagine a more callous business model. The Coalition for the Protection of Greyhounds believed that Ladbrokes was behind the email, and a representative from the organisation told the Murphy Inquiry, set up to investigate online gambling and its impacts on problem gamblers, that the company was leading an intense lobbying effort to unite the industry against any proposed reforms.
In July 2024 the sport in New South Wales was rocked again. GRNSW’s chief veterinary officer, Alex Brittan, was near broken by the job and decided to resign. As his final act, he penned a 54-page document as part of his handover to GRNSW – and then made the document public.
Brittan’s letter contained more horrific allegations of abuse. He said that greyhounds were raced with ‘barbaric intensity’. He had witnessed ‘cases of extreme distress’, in which competing dogs had ‘recent pools of blood’ around them after ripping off their toenails while ‘clawing’ at their cage doors. He also identified a flurry of ‘preventable’ on-track deaths, due to greyhounds running into poles with no padding provided. Brittan further claimed that of the roughly 4200 dogs entering the industry each year, only 1600 were being rehomed. The remainder were living out their lives in ‘industrial kennels’.
Injuries had become more frequent due to the increase in the number of races held each year to feed the gambling boom. Brittan accused GRNSW of lying about the number of greyhound deaths, claiming that the data kept by the organisation showed three times the 970 deaths that it had reported. Brittan cited one case where greyhound bodies and remains were found in freezers and a firepit at a vet’s premises. There was another case, Brittan said, where a GRNSW official had asked a local shooter to kill an unwanted dog.56
Brittan’s grim litany of cruelty and abuse was, by now, sadly predictable. So was the political response. Labor premier Chris Minns quickly ruled out a ban of the industry. Instead, another inquiry was established, headed by the Acting Commissioner of the Greyhound Welfare and Integrity Commission, Lea Drake. At the time of writing, this remained in progress, but it raked over the same coals of animal suffering as previous inquiries. These were summed up by the counsel assisting the inquiry, Leo Saunders, who laid out the case against the industry’s current mode of operation. He argued that because the sport relies on the use of live animals, it carries an inescapable potential for moral hazard; that although the number of racing tracks had been reduced, none met the minimum track standards set by GRNSW; and that the fate of the dogs was determined by the number of races held each year.
On 10 December 2024, the deputy prime minister of New Zealand, Winston Peters, announced that his nation was banning greyhound racing. ‘The time has come to do the right thing,’ he said simply. Australian governments should follow suit and end a ‘sport’ that exploits animals in order to serve the business model of Big Gambling companies.
11 HIGH ROLLERS, PRIVATE JETS AND BAGS OF CASH
For many Australians, one of the more memorable images of the past decade is the October 2020 appearance of casino mogul James Packer before an inquiry headed by Patricia Bergin, set up in the wake of revelations about Crown Resorts’ criminal underpinnings. It was an unimaginable fall from grace for someone born into one of Australia’s wealthiest and most powerful families. In July 2019, Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes program had exposed the company’s ties to Asian ‘triad’ gangs, and their control over the companies that recruited and made travel arrangements for wealthy Chinese gamblers to visit overseas casinos, known as ‘junkets’.
Packer was giving evidence from his $200-million superyacht somewhere in the South Pacific. He cut a sad figure, his well-publicised struggles with mental illness visible in his sweating, puffy face and his almost vacant demeanour.
Under questioning, Packer admitted to a string of reckless and possibly illegal activities at his flagship company. In both its Melbourne and Perth venues Crown Resorts had been involved in a string of rogue behaviour: accepting cash stored in shoeboxes and plastic bags from wealthy, high-roller Chinese gamblers, and maintaining relationships with customers suspected of being involved in sex slavery and narcotics dealing operated by known criminal gangs. These relationships facilitated money laundering on an industrial scale, possibly in the billions.1 Crown’s reckless approach to business undermined Australia’s anti-money-laundering laws and threatened its national security as a result. Crown’s actions placed its staff in China directly in harm’s way and posed a danger to groups vulnerable to drug addiction and sexual exploitation.
The revelations flowed out of the three official inquiries into Crown, which captured a fascinated media’s attention. The collective findings were a humiliating blow to the powerful Packer family’s reputation. James Packer would lose the licence for his signature project, the towering mega-casino at Sydney’s Barangaroo site. As he departed the casino industry, it was hard to ignore Victorian commissioner Ray Finkelstein’s stinging words about Crown: ‘Wherever I look I see not just bad conduct but illegal conduct, improper conduct, unacceptable conduct and it permeates the whole organisation.’2
Why the shock?
The litany of wrongdoing at Crown shocked the public, but it was hardly a surprising development. As we have seen, the company had long been criticised for its ruthless and exploitative culture. Its well-publicised track record called into question Crown’s high-risk business model, dependent on foreign high rollers.
In 2014, the ABC’s Four Corners had detailed how Packer was bringing in mega-wealthy gamblers from mainland China, using junket operators with links to organised crime. The fallout from these bombshell revelations? Nothing. As ABC investigative journalist Stephen Long wrote, ‘There was barely a response from the major political parties to these news reports about this powerful and politically connected company. Nor was there much reaction from the key regulator, the Victorian Commission for Gambling and Liquor Regulation.’3 The message was clear: Crown was too big to fail and too powerful to regulate, so it could keep plying its criminal-infused business model.
In 2016, no action was taken against Crown when County Court judge Michael McInerney, after hearing several cases related to a major heroin-trafficking ring, described the casino as a haven for drug traffickers and money launderers and a ‘blot on the community’.4 Yet two years later the Victorian gambling regulator reviewed Crown’s operating licence and found it a ‘suitable’ operator. By law, this finding required the regulator to assess whether Crown’s operations were free from criminal influence, but the agency had undertaken no independent evaluation.5
The failure of government to respond to these earlier, serious allegations of wrongdoing is the starkest example of the dark side of Big Gambling in Australia: the state was supporting a corporation caught up in nefarious activities through its lax regulation and special deals, helping Crown attract gamblers from China.6
Crown lobbied governments to cement its business model in China. In 2003, the federal Liberal government led by John Howard allowed Crown to bulk-lodge applications of behalf of rich Chinese nationals. Leaked Crown files showed that the company sometimes relied on the word of organised criminals to vouch for the character of visa applicants.7
In 2016 Crown successfully lobbied the Liberal government led by Malcolm Turnbull to further ease visa restrictions on wealthy Chinese by introducing an ‘express visa’. As The Australian Financial Review noted at the time, ‘the service for “high value visitors” was regarded as a “special lane” for Chinese gamblers by some in the industry and viewed as tacit government support for bringing high-rollers to Australia’.8 Whatever its merits, the express visa became a virtual green light to money laundering. Andrew Wilkie noted that high rollers – also known as VIP players – ‘would disembark from private jets in Melbourne, come with as many as 15 bags unchecked by customs, and be taken straight to the casino, where they were provided with sex workers and drugs’.9
Former Australian Border Force chief Roman Quaedvlieg told Channel Nine’s investigation into Crown that two federal ministers and a backbencher had lobbied his agency to make it easier for Chinese gamblers to enter Australia on private jets. Not surprisingly, the Australian Federal Police were aware that many triads and organised criminal groups were using casino junkets to move money overseas and launder it.
Looking on as Crown’s business model was stripped bare before an incredulous public was the management of Packer’s cross-town Sydney rival, Star Casino. For years, Star had portrayed itself as the ‘cleanskin’ casino.10 Yet two years later its management team was also forced to front an official inquiry following another journalistic investigation. A joint team from 60 Minutes, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald found that the company’s shiny image was a charade: Star had been engaged in the same criminal-inspired practices as Crown. And it had continued its links with criminal gangs even after Crown’s reputation had been shredded. As one commentor noted, Star’s directors and management ‘remained strangely ignorant of the existential threat to their business’.11
Star was subjected to three official inquiries – two conducted in Sydney by Adam Bell SC, and one in Brisbane by Robert Gotterson KC. Each found similar serious flaws in the company’s operations.
Thus, between 2019 and 2022 the dirty secrets behind the phenomenal financial success of Australia’s casinos were laid before the public. Their business models were exposed as rotten to the core. Of course, this had long been the case, but the chase for Chinese high rollers plunged Crown and Star into a quagmire of corporate sleaze, as they were willing to push to the brink of what was legal and beyond. And yet there was much at stake financially for both companies. Each was in the process of building a new casino – Packer at Barangaroo on Sydney Harbour, and Star at Queens Wharf in Brisbane. The viability of each was threatened if the high-risk business model blew up.
It all sounds like a plot from an airport crime novel or a TV drama series: shady tycoons and dangerous crooks galore, trafficked sex workers, a whistleblower and top-end-of-town corporate enablers. Along with a cast of memorable characters were bags of unaccounted-for cash, drug money flowing like wine, and Australian police and spy agencies on the prowl.
The new gambling mecca
Where did all this madness start?
By the end of the first decade of the new millennium, a glittering prize awaited casino operators around the world: gilt-edged profits from the rapid rise of China’s newly minted class of super-rich entrepreneurs. The opening-up of the Chinese economy to foreign investment from the late 1980s saw China’s multimillionaires and billionaires control an increasing amount of the world’s wealth. And many loved to gamble because, much as in Australia, gambling is a national obsession in China. Although, on coming to power in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party had banned gambling, it was estimated in 2014 that the equivalent of A$154 billion was being gambled illegally across the country, and about half as much again in offshore casinos.12 The only legal gambling allowed in China was in the former Portuguese colony of Macau, which, when handed back to China in 1999, was allowed to retain its casino industry, which had been developed in the 19th century. Macau would become a world-renowned gambling mecca, the ‘Las Vegas of the East’.13
The casinos’ eagerness to attract high-rolling Chinese gamblers was motivated not just by their staggering wealth, but also because they were high-intensity players who were willing to take big risks to seek instant rewards in both money and excitement. This, of course, put them at great risk of developing pathological gambling habits.14
James Packer’s story is well known. Following his legendary father Kerry’s death in 2005, and armed with an inheritance of around $7 billion and with the proceeds from selling off the family’s prized media business, James hurtled headlong into the international gambling industry. In China’s booming economy, Packer looked to grab a share of the Macau casino market, but also liked the prospects for his casinos in Melbourne and Perth. He was aware of the bottled-up demand for gambling from decades of communist repression, and of the wealthy Chinese who were keen to visit casinos overseas.15
Crown’s high-wire risk culture
It was not by accident that Crown slid into being a quasi-criminal corporation; its culture propelled it in this direction. But in building a business model around Chinese high rollers and their Macau-based junket operators, Packer was taking on a criminal-infested industry that had tentacles reaching around the globe.
Several junket operators had become large and sophisticated businesses, with some listed on the world’s stock exchanges. And, as Patricia Bergin’s investigations made clear, Packer played a key role in encouraging Crown to foster relationships with them. He was one of the key driving forces in bringing the Macau junkets into Crown’s casinos in Australia. Not all junkets were run by criminals and not all high rollers wanted to launder money, but the connection between the two was well known in the international casino industry.
