Latest news with #AlexGreenwich
Daily Mail
12 hours ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Casino giant slapped down in latest push to install pokies as machine profits hit all-time high of $8 billion
Australia's largest casino group will not be permitted to run pokies as fallout continues from a damning report into a major poker machine regulator. NSW Premier Chris Minns on Friday ruled out legislation to allow Crown's Sydney casino to install poker machines. It followed reports the gaming giant was lobbying MPs to overcome the legal obstacle as their licence does not permit pokies. 'This is a legislative imposition that's been put in place in the state for over a decade,' the premier said. 'It would require a bill, presumably, from the government, to knock over that restriction, and I'm not going to do it.' The government did not indicate its position if a non-government MP tried to move legislation supporting Crown's position. But there is no suggestion any MP would make that move. Independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich said allowing pokies in Crown's waterfront casino at Barangaroo would betray the community's agreement to give away public land for a restricted gaming facility without poker machines. Gaming tables at the towering complex opened a year late in 2022 after an inquiry found Crown was not fit to operate a casino, forcing it into three years of remediation. 'With gambling harm on the rise, we need less venues with large poker machine floors, not new ones right on the harbour,' Greenwich said. He referenced a NSW auditor-general report released on Thursday that found regulators were failing in harm-minimisation efforts. The report also found licence conditions were not being pro-actively reviewed and little was done to force pokie venues to take meaningful actions when problem gambling was noticed. Poker machine numbers have increased under the state Labor government, with NSW having half of all Australian pokies in 2022/23. Profits from the machines hit all-time highs of $8.4 billion in the 2023/24 financial year. That delivered $2.3 billion in tax revenue, a figure tipped to hit $2.9 billion by 2027/28. Gambling reform advocates found the report unsurprising and lamented government inaction in the reform space. An independent panel in 2024 recommended mandatory cashless gaming be introduced state-wide, but the government has not followed through. 'This inaction privileges the special pleading of a harmful and predatory industry over and above the health and wellbeing of the people of NSW,' Wesley Mission chief executive Reverend Stu Cameron said.
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Casino giant slapped down in latest poker machine bid
Australia's largest casino group will not be permitted to run pokies as fallout continues from a damning report into a major poker machine regulator. NSW Premier Chris Minns on Friday ruled out moving legislation to allow Crown's Sydney casino to install poker machines. It followed reports the gaming giant was lobbying MPs to overcome the legal obstacle as their licence does not permit pokies. "This is a legislative imposition that's been put in place in the state for over a decade," the premier said. "It would require a bill, presumably, from the government, to knock over that restriction, and I'm not going to do it." The government did not indicate its position if a non-government MP tried to move legislation supporting Crown's position. But there is no suggestion any MP would make that move. Independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich said allowing pokies in Crown's waterfront casino at Barangaroo would betray the community's agreement to give away public land for a restricted gaming facility without poker machines. Gaming tables at the towering complex opened a year late in 2022 after an inquiry found Crown was not fit to operate a casino, forcing it into three years of remediation. "With gambling harm on the rise, we need less venues with large poker machine floors, not new ones right on the harbour," Mr Greenwich said. He referenced a NSW auditor-general report released on Thursday that found regulators were failing in harm-minimisation efforts. The report also found licence conditions were not being pro-actively reviewed and little was done to force pokie venues to take meaningful actions when problem gambling was noticed. Poker machine numbers have increased under the state Labor government, with NSW having half of all Australian pokies in 2022/23. Profits from the machines hit all-time highs of $8.4 billion in the 2023/24 financial year. That delivered $2.3 billion in tax revenue, a figure tipped to hit $2.9 billion by 2027/28. Gambling reform advocates found the report unsurprising and lamented government inaction in the reform space. An independent panel in 2024 recommended mandatory cashless gaming be introduced state-wide, but the government has not followed through. "This inaction privileges the special pleading of a harmful and predatory industry over and above the health and wellbeing of the people of NSW," Wesley Mission chief executive Reverend Stu Cameron said. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data
The Advertiser
14 hours ago
- Business
- The Advertiser
Casino giant slapped down in latest poker machine bid
Australia's largest casino group will not be permitted to run pokies as fallout continues from a damning report into a major poker machine regulator. NSW Premier Chris Minns on Friday ruled out moving legislation to allow Crown's Sydney casino to install poker machines. It followed reports the gaming giant was lobbying MPs to overcome the legal obstacle as their licence does not permit pokies. "This is a legislative imposition that's been put in place in the state for over a decade," the premier said. "It would require a bill, presumably, from the government, to knock over that restriction, and I'm not going to do it." The government did not indicate its position if a non-government MP tried to move legislation supporting Crown's position. But there is no suggestion any MP would make that move. Independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich said allowing pokies in Crown's waterfront casino at Barangaroo would betray the community's agreement to give away public land for a restricted gaming facility without poker machines. Gaming tables at the towering complex opened a year late in 2022 after an inquiry found Crown was not fit to operate a casino, forcing it into three years of remediation. "With gambling harm on the rise, we need less venues with large poker machine floors, not new ones right on the harbour," Mr Greenwich said. He referenced a NSW auditor-general report released on Thursday that found regulators were failing in harm-minimisation efforts. The report also found licence conditions were not being pro-actively reviewed and little was done to force pokie venues to take meaningful actions when problem gambling was noticed. Poker machine numbers have increased under the state Labor government, with NSW having half of all Australian pokies in 2022/23. Profits from the machines hit all-time highs of $8.4 billion in the 2023/24 financial year. That delivered $2.3 billion in tax revenue, a figure tipped to hit $2.9 billion by 2027/28. Gambling reform advocates found the report unsurprising and lamented government inaction in the reform space. An independent panel in 2024 recommended mandatory cashless gaming be introduced state-wide, but the government has not followed through. "This inaction privileges the special pleading of a harmful and predatory industry over and above the health and wellbeing of the people of NSW," Wesley Mission chief executive Reverend Stu Cameron said. Australia's largest casino group will not be permitted to run pokies as fallout continues from a damning report into a major poker machine regulator. NSW Premier Chris Minns on Friday ruled out moving legislation to allow Crown's Sydney casino to install poker machines. It followed reports the gaming giant was lobbying MPs to overcome the legal obstacle as their licence does not permit pokies. "This is a legislative imposition that's been put in place in the state for over a decade," the premier said. "It would require a bill, presumably, from the government, to knock over that restriction, and I'm not going to do it." The government did not indicate its position if a non-government MP tried to move legislation supporting Crown's position. But there is no suggestion any MP would make that move. Independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich said allowing pokies in Crown's waterfront casino at Barangaroo would betray the community's agreement to give away public land for a restricted gaming facility without poker machines. Gaming tables at the towering complex opened a year late in 2022 after an inquiry found Crown was not fit to operate a casino, forcing it into three years of remediation. "With gambling harm on the rise, we need less venues with large poker machine floors, not new ones right on the harbour," Mr Greenwich said. He referenced a NSW auditor-general report released on Thursday that found regulators were failing in harm-minimisation efforts. The report also found licence conditions were not being pro-actively reviewed and little was done to force pokie venues to take meaningful actions when problem gambling was noticed. Poker machine numbers have increased under the state Labor government, with NSW having half of all Australian pokies in 2022/23. Profits from the machines hit all-time highs of $8.4 billion in the 2023/24 financial year. That delivered $2.3 billion in tax revenue, a figure tipped to hit $2.9 billion by 2027/28. Gambling reform advocates found the report unsurprising and lamented government inaction in the reform space. An independent panel in 2024 recommended mandatory cashless gaming be introduced state-wide, but the government has not followed through. "This inaction privileges the special pleading of a harmful and predatory industry over and above the health and wellbeing of the people of NSW," Wesley Mission chief executive Reverend Stu Cameron said. Australia's largest casino group will not be permitted to run pokies as fallout continues from a damning report into a major poker machine regulator. NSW Premier Chris Minns on Friday ruled out moving legislation to allow Crown's Sydney casino to install poker machines. It followed reports the gaming giant was lobbying MPs to overcome the legal obstacle as their licence does not permit pokies. "This is a legislative imposition that's been put in place in the state for over a decade," the premier said. "It would require a bill, presumably, from the government, to knock over that restriction, and I'm not going to do it." The government did not indicate its position if a non-government MP tried to move legislation supporting Crown's position. But there is no suggestion any MP would make that move. Independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich said allowing pokies in Crown's waterfront casino at Barangaroo would betray the community's agreement to give away public land for a restricted gaming facility without poker machines. Gaming tables at the towering complex opened a year late in 2022 after an inquiry found Crown was not fit to operate a casino, forcing it into three years of remediation. "With gambling harm on the rise, we need less venues with large poker machine floors, not new ones right on the harbour," Mr Greenwich said. He referenced a NSW auditor-general report released on Thursday that found regulators were failing in harm-minimisation efforts. The report also found licence conditions were not being pro-actively reviewed and little was done to force pokie venues to take meaningful actions when problem gambling was noticed. Poker machine numbers have increased under the state Labor government, with NSW having half of all Australian pokies in 2022/23. Profits from the machines hit all-time highs of $8.4 billion in the 2023/24 financial year. That delivered $2.3 billion in tax revenue, a figure tipped to hit $2.9 billion by 2027/28. Gambling reform advocates found the report unsurprising and lamented government inaction in the reform space. An independent panel in 2024 recommended mandatory cashless gaming be introduced state-wide, but the government has not followed through. "This inaction privileges the special pleading of a harmful and predatory industry over and above the health and wellbeing of the people of NSW," Wesley Mission chief executive Reverend Stu Cameron said. Australia's largest casino group will not be permitted to run pokies as fallout continues from a damning report into a major poker machine regulator. NSW Premier Chris Minns on Friday ruled out moving legislation to allow Crown's Sydney casino to install poker machines. It followed reports the gaming giant was lobbying MPs to overcome the legal obstacle as their licence does not permit pokies. "This is a legislative imposition that's been put in place in the state for over a decade," the premier said. "It would require a bill, presumably, from the government, to knock over that restriction, and I'm not going to do it." The government did not indicate its position if a non-government MP tried to move legislation supporting Crown's position. But there is no suggestion any MP would make that move. Independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich said allowing pokies in Crown's waterfront casino at Barangaroo would betray the community's agreement to give away public land for a restricted gaming facility without poker machines. Gaming tables at the towering complex opened a year late in 2022 after an inquiry found Crown was not fit to operate a casino, forcing it into three years of remediation. "With gambling harm on the rise, we need less venues with large poker machine floors, not new ones right on the harbour," Mr Greenwich said. He referenced a NSW auditor-general report released on Thursday that found regulators were failing in harm-minimisation efforts. The report also found licence conditions were not being pro-actively reviewed and little was done to force pokie venues to take meaningful actions when problem gambling was noticed. Poker machine numbers have increased under the state Labor government, with NSW having half of all Australian pokies in 2022/23. Profits from the machines hit all-time highs of $8.4 billion in the 2023/24 financial year. That delivered $2.3 billion in tax revenue, a figure tipped to hit $2.9 billion by 2027/28. Gambling reform advocates found the report unsurprising and lamented government inaction in the reform space. An independent panel in 2024 recommended mandatory cashless gaming be introduced state-wide, but the government has not followed through. "This inaction privileges the special pleading of a harmful and predatory industry over and above the health and wellbeing of the people of NSW," Wesley Mission chief executive Reverend Stu Cameron said.
Perth Now
15 hours ago
- Business
- Perth Now
Casino giant slapped down in latest poker machine bid
Australia's largest casino group will not be permitted to run pokies as fallout continues from a damning report into a major poker machine regulator. NSW Premier Chris Minns on Friday ruled out moving legislation to allow Crown's Sydney casino to install poker machines. It followed reports the gaming giant was lobbying MPs to overcome the legal obstacle as their licence does not permit pokies. "This is a legislative imposition that's been put in place in the state for over a decade," the premier said. "It would require a bill, presumably, from the government, to knock over that restriction, and I'm not going to do it." The government did not indicate its position if a non-government MP tried to move legislation supporting Crown's position. But there is no suggestion any MP would make that move. Independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich said allowing pokies in Crown's waterfront casino at Barangaroo would betray the community's agreement to give away public land for a restricted gaming facility without poker machines. Gaming tables at the towering complex opened a year late in 2022 after an inquiry found Crown was not fit to operate a casino, forcing it into three years of remediation. "With gambling harm on the rise, we need less venues with large poker machine floors, not new ones right on the harbour," Mr Greenwich said. He referenced a NSW auditor-general report released on Thursday that found regulators were failing in harm-minimisation efforts. The report also found licence conditions were not being pro-actively reviewed and little was done to force pokie venues to take meaningful actions when problem gambling was noticed. Poker machine numbers have increased under the state Labor government, with NSW having half of all Australian pokies in 2022/23. Profits from the machines hit all-time highs of $8.4 billion in the 2023/24 financial year. That delivered $2.3 billion in tax revenue, a figure tipped to hit $2.9 billion by 2027/28. Gambling reform advocates found the report unsurprising and lamented government inaction in the reform space. An independent panel in 2024 recommended mandatory cashless gaming be introduced state-wide, but the government has not followed through. "This inaction privileges the special pleading of a harmful and predatory industry over and above the health and wellbeing of the people of NSW," Wesley Mission chief executive Reverend Stu Cameron said.
New Statesman
2 days ago
- Health
- New Statesman
Australia is no model for assisted dying
Photo by Kelly Barnes / AAP Image via Alamy Australian laws on voluntary assisted dying (VAD) are deemed so similar to the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill that three quarters of overseas witnesses invited to give evidence to MPs were from Australia. 'This is not a revolutionary law reform,' Alex Greenwich, a politician from New South Wales, told the bill's scrutiny committee earlier this year. 'It has been tried and tested, we have appropriate safeguards in place throughout Australia, and they work.' Although Australian states extend the six-month life expectancy requirement to a year for those with neurodegenerative conditions, in terms of eligibility, process and safeguards, their laws are similar to the UK's bill. The two differ only in that self-administration of life-ending drugs would be permitted here, and a multidisciplinary panel would review cases. So when Kim Leadbeater, Labour MP and the bill's sponsor, responded with a heart emoji and '#ChoiceAtTheEndOfLife' to a Guardian article published on 7 June that showed the Australian system being abused, eyebrows were raised. An elderly couple had been granted VAD when neither were terminally ill; medics in New South Wales effectively greenlit their suicide pact. 'Looks like the safeguards didn't work,' Mark Taubert, an NHS consultant and the vice-president of the European Association for Palliative Care, responded on X. According to the palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke, the story 'could not highlight more starkly the dangers of the law we are currently debating'. MPs hearing evidence on the bill had little time with six Australian witnesses, all of whom were supportive of VAD. Their arguments didn't always stand up to scrutiny. 'The medications are completely effective. I have not experienced any failures,' said Chloe Furst, a palliative care doctor from South Australia and board member of Voluntary Assisted Dying Australia and New Zealand. But, MPs pointed out, there is no requirement that a doctor be present when someone self-administers, nor is there provision for reporting complications. In Western Australia, where this information is collected, complications were recorded in 4.3 per cent of deaths in 2023-24. Asked if it was a concern that a 'large proportion of people who opted for assisted dying cited being a burden as their reason', another witness, Meredith Blake from the University of Western Australia, replied this was 'not the evidence that we have got'. Except it is. Official state figures showed 35 per cent of those seeking VAD cited being a burden on family, friends or carers as their reason for doing so. Blake replied: 'If there are people who are saying they are a burden, that does not mean that their decision is not voluntary.' While MPs were told Australian palliative care doctors had 'embraced' VAD, I have spoken with medics in Australia who are troubled by how the legislation operates. Academics and politicians are, too. Robert Clark, a former attorney-general and MP in Victoria wrote to the committee twice with his observations: the second time after his fellow Australians had addressed MPs. Numerous aspects of their evidence were 'factually incorrect or incomplete', Clark claimed. There was not adequate palliative care available to all terminally ill patients in Australia. Evidence didn't show any reduction in non-medically assisted suicide. The right of doctors to object to VAD was not respected. Many doctors 'feel unable to raise concerns about VAD… lest they suffer adverse professional or career consequences, or else they are leaving the hospital system altogether', he said. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe British palliative care doctor Alex Hughes recently relayed his experience of assisted dying while working in Australia. Hughes, who is neutral on VAD in principle, described a borderline case in which it seemed the patient had chosen to die because of poor alternative care options. In another, he suspected the man may have been influenced by depression, but this had gone unexplored in assessment. Were assisted dying to come to the UK, doctors would be 'at a heightened risk of unconscious bias… [and] may lean towards giving patients the 'benefit of the doubt', granting assisted dying to individuals who, in reality, have more than six months to live.' The events described in the Guardian confirm that risk is not merely hypothetical. Ahead of its return to the Commons on 13 June, 1,000 doctors urged MPs to vote against the assisted dying bill. They argued it is 'deeply flawed' and unsafe. Similar statements have been made by the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which say they cannot support the legislation as it stands. Such concerns are not 'noise', as Leadbeater has suggested. Many critics have no issue with the principle of safe VAD. But the passage of the bill has revealed law-making at its worst: rushed debate, the views of the vulnerable ignored or downplayed, and crucial information on how the bill would work absent. Supporters say there will be time to iron out details later. That is too risky. Under current plans, some vulnerable people will be helped – in Hughes's words – to have 'an inappropriate assisted death'. He now poses two critical questions for MPs: how many vulnerable people slipping through the net is acceptable? And can adequate safeguards be put in place 'without creating a system so cumbersome that it becomes unworkable'? It's time for MPs to be honest with themselves and the public: enabling some an autonomous death through assisted dying will inevitably put others at risk of harm. [See also: Has any Chancellor faced a challenge this daunting?] Related
