The former head of Victoria’s state gaming regulator has warned that a move by New South Wales to establish a standalone casino regulator presents a significant risk in how the responsibility is managed.
Speaking on a panel organized and moderated by Inside Asian Gaming at the AGE Summit – part of the Australasian Gaming Expo – on Wednesday, Peter Cohen, who was Executive Commissioner and CEO of the Victorian Commission for Gambling Regulation between 2002 and 2010, described the idea of having a dedicated casino regulator separated from other gambling regulations as a problem.
This after the NSW government announced the establishment of a new NSW Independent Casino Commission (NICC) in response to the damning findings of the Bergin inquiry into Crown Resorts. NICC will replace at least some of the functions of the current Independent Liquor & Gaming Authority (ILGA).
“The idea of having a casino regulator separate from the rest of your gambling regulators is a problem, and the reason it’s a problem is because your standalone casino regulator is more easily captured by the casino industry,” Cohen said.
“Not deliberately, but your inspectors get too close to the people they regulate. If you have a diverse regulator – one that regulates casinos and betting on horses and poker machine venues – you can rotate your inspectors and you get less opportunity for those people to be captured by the casino industry.
“The second problem with the casino-only model is that the inspectors get bored, and when they get bored they do silly things. By combining them you can spread them around, diversify their skill set, make them more engaged as a workforce and you then get a better regulator.
“Going to a standalone casino regulator in NSW, they have to be very careful that the NSW Independent Casino Commission doesn’t somehow find that it gets captured itself by the casino. It’s just a difficult issue they have to resolve and there is a risk in that.”
Jamie Nettleton, Partner at Addisons Lawyers and a specialist in the gaming space, offered a similar sentiment in response to 19 key recommendations on the regulation of NSW casinos contained within the Bergin Report.
“If you look at the Bergin inquiry, one of the recommendations made in respect of the regulator is that the personnel who are involved need to be experienced in the areas they are looking at, [the regulator] needs to be well resourced and it needs to have a number of full-time people,” Nettleton said.
“If you take that to its logical extreme and NICC is [filled with] very experienced people who are specialists in their field … there is the worry of them getting bored, having the feeling of needing to do something.
“All these people who are highly experienced and skilled sitting there twiddling their thumbs, watching to ensure everything is compliant, well, if everything is compliant, what are they going to do? So there is that question of are those people going to be bored, will they get sick of it or feel the necessity to be seen to be taking action irrespective of whether there is regular action to be taken?”
The 2022 AGE Summit concludes Thursday at ICC Sydney.
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