The price of Stanley Ho’s proposed backing for a horse racing track and training facilities in Australia is a casino licence to fund it, according to media reports from Down Under.
The Queensland Racing board believed Dr Ho, the former Macau casino monopolist, was prepared to underwrite a new international racing centre at Palm Meadows if granted a licence for a private casino on the site.
But Peter Cameron, writing in the Gold Coast Bulletin said leaks from the office of Andrew Fraser, the Queensland state treasurer, suggested there was “Buckley’s chance” of that happening.
For those unfamiliar with Australian popular culture, that means not much of a chance at all. The origin of the phrase is disputed, but a popular story says it is derived from the life of one William Buckley, a British-born convict who escaped in Victoria in 1803 and lived among the Aborigines there for 30 years even though his former gaolers put his chances of survival at nil or next-to-nil.
While there’s life there’s hope, so the example of the resourceful Mr Buckley may actually spur on Dr Ho. For as the Americans say, ‘winners never quit, and quitters never win’.
RelatedPosts
