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In a wide-ranging interview, billionaire James Packer has slammed former Victorian premier Dan Andrews and has taken aim at gambling regulators in Australia for trying to bankrupt the local casino industry.
The former casino mogul was scathing about Andrews in an interview with his friend Joe Aston, published by the latter’s media site Rampart, saying that the former premier had blindsided Crown with a fresh tax in 2022 that cost the business tens of millions of dollars.
James Packer slammed regulation of Australia’s casino sector and former Victorian Premier Dan Andrews. Credit: Seven News
“I couldn’t think more lowly of Daniel Andrews, I think he is human filth … I hope he sues me,” Packer says in the interview with Aston.
He said the additional tax impost might have derailed the $8.9 billion sale of Crown to Blackstone, which eventually went ahead to give Packer a lucrative exit from the casino industry. Packer was the major owner of Crown, which operates casinos in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth.
“Daniel Andrews is about my least favourite person in the world. I think Daniel Andrews not only ruined Victoria. He almost ruined my life,” Packer said. Andrews was contacted for comment.
He has a similar level of contempt for some of the regulators that were instrumental in removing the casino licences of both Crown and its Sydney rival Star Entertainment, saying they should have looked a lot earlier at Star.
“It’s one of the miracles of life that Philip Crawford’s got a job,” Packer said of the NSW Independent Casino Commission’s chief regulator.
A series of inquiries, triggered by investigations by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, found both Crown and Star guilty of multiple money-laundering failures and alleged associations with criminal groups. It also led to the stricter regulations on gaming, and poker machines specifically, that has affected both Crown and Star’s revenue.
“Star was behaving far worse than Crown ever behaved, and that’s been proven out by the fact that [the Australian Securities and Investments Commission] never laid any charges” against Crown’s board.
“I’m not saying we didn’t make mistakes, but Star was worse than us, and Star’s operating under Philip Crawford’s nose,” he said. Crawford declined to comment.
Crown and Star lost their casino licences and have faced much stronger regulation which has affected their struggling gambling businesses. Credit: Fairafax Media
Crown was found unfit to run its Melbourne casino after a royal commission exposed a “disgraceful” litany of legal and ethical breaches.
A Victorian royal commission into Crown, led by former federal court judge Ray Finkelstein, found the casino operator’s behaviour was “illegal, dishonest, unethical and exploitative”.
In 2022, Australian Securities and Investments Commission chairman Joe Longo cited a lack of evidence and the statute of limitations for the decision that year to not individually prosecute Crown’s board of directors.
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Packer said in the interview that the two major casino operators had now been hollowed out by regulatory action, while pubs and clubs were given favourable conditions despite casinos paying “hundreds of millions of dollars” for licences and in taxes.
“I think it’s outrageous what’s happening to the casinos in Australia,” he said. “It’s as though they’re trying to bankrupt the businesses, and at the same time, the pubs and the clubs are flourishing.
“Now you have a situation where cash can’t be used in the casinos, and cash is used in the pubs and the clubs.”
This bad blood aside, Packer said he was in a good place after years of personal battles with mental health and substance abuse. He is preparing to celebrate Christmas in Australia with family.
“I’ve got a good psychologist, a good psychiatrist, and I’m working with them. And I think I’m … one of the luckiest people in the world,” he told the Rampart.
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