Peter Cohen, the former CEO and executive commissioner of the Victorian Commission for Gambling Regulation, spoke at a panel recently at the Australasian Gaming Expo hosted by Inside Asian Gaming, where he expressed concerns about New South Wales (NSW) recent decision to create a standalone casino regulator.
The state recently formed the NSW Independent Casino Commission (NICC), which will take over the casino-specific regulatory duties that were previously held by the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority (ILGA).
According to Cohen, this only invites further problems, because its singularity increases the potential for corruption. He told IAG that “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.”
He added that “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.”
Jamie Nettleton, a prominent gaming attorney in the county, feels similarly, even going so far as to say the NICC regulators might eventually get bored with the lack of diversity.
Nettleton told IAG that “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?”
