The LNP-dominated Brisbane City Council handed over public land — the former Stafford Bowls Club — to Brisbane Racing Club.
And the Queensland Labor Government signed off on a plan to install 50 new pokies machines.
What’s more, the Queensland Labor Government’s Commissioner for Liquor and Gaming waived the usual requirement for Brisbane Racing Club to submit a community impact statement for their gaming licence, and only advertised for community comment after immense public pressure.
The supposedly independent Commissioner actively facilitated Brisbane Racing Club’s application for more pokies and waived the standard accountability requirements, denying the local community a say. When the Commissioner was finally pressured to act, a meeting was only advertised to a select few via invitations from the state MP.
To see the regulator jump at requests from private entities and Labor MPs while ignoring countless community calls makes a mockery of both the independence of the Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation and the whole pokies licensing process.
What do our communities need to do to get the Commissioner to listen to them when clearly gaming machine operators are getting special “preliminary chats” with the Commissioner already.
Pokies are specifically designed to exploit the most vulnerable in our community. Queenslanders deserve to know if the supposedly independent regulator is giving private companies special treatment to allow even more of these predatory machines in our communities.
We don’t want to see this happen in Stafford. Local residents have done an incredible job opposing this re-development, calling instead for a family-friendly community hub that will connect nearby sporting facilities and small businesses.
Stafford doesn't want a commercial gambling interest like Brisbane Racing Club using public land to line their pockets at the expense of local residents.
Loud and clear, Stafford said no to pokies on public land — but the Queensland Government is ignoring them for their mates in the gambling industry.
What happened?
My office conducted investigations into the Brisbane Racing Club’s takeover of Stafford Bowls Club which revealed that the Queensland Government’s Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation knew that Crushers Leagues Club and Brisbane Racing Club were colluding to turn the club into a commercial pokies den — and actively facilitated an increase in pokies licences — two years before any information was released to the community.
Documents revealed by a right to information request show that the Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation, the Queensland Government’s gambling regulator, has uncovered serious inconsistencies with how the office engages with private companies looking to increase their pokies licences and local communities who’ll be affected.
The Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation was actively involved in early negotiations between Crushers Leagues Club and Brisbane Racing Club on the transfer of lease — and were aware that Brisbane Racing Club being exempt from any requirements to advertise or undertake a community impact statement was a condition of the term sheet between Brisbane Racing Club and Crushers.
The last time a community impact statement was conducted on the impact of pokies at the Stafford Bowls Club site was nearly thirty years ago in 1996. Since then, the only community consultation held was in 2019 — where the single submission was interpreted as “generally opposed to gaming” by the Office and was not considered as an adverse comment. The only guidelines the Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation have for advertising is “you must display a sign conspicuously for 28 days on the premises to which the application relates” in a similar manner to liquor licence applications despite their significantly different impact and audience. Stafford Bowls Club had been closed for four years at the time the sign was displayed to meet advertising requirements.
Local residents reported being unaware of the advertised consultation and criticised this method as ineffectual, given the club had not been open for four years at this point.
The Commissioner for Liquor, Gaming and Fair Trading approved an internal brief allowing the waiver of advertising and community impact statement requirements on the basis of demographic modelling conducted by Jacaranda Advisory, which arbitrarily included certain suburbs and excluded others while only considering the relative demography of those arbitrary boundaries compared to the entire Brisbane City Council. This is a notably lower standard of evidence than is expected of anyone making objections, or any assessment of any nearby clusters of vulnerable people or gaming sensitive sites as required under a community impact statement — even though the Stafford Bowls Club site has at least one example of each site within walking distance.
It is hard to read these uncovered documents as anything but Queensland’s gambling regulator actively facilitating private deals between third parties and encouraging more pokies in our community.
Jimmy Sullivan is blaming Brisbane City Council’s facilitation of a closed door deal between Crushers and Brisbane Racing Club to transfer the lease. But the state government regulator was already actively facilitating the gaming licence transfer as a condition of that lease assignment a year before the Council vote, and was waiving the need for accountability and consultation on a sixfold increase in gaming machines in Stafford, a site where there hadn’t been any for four years.
As of today, pokies have not been operational at Stafford Bowls Club for over eight years and a community impact statement has not been conducted for twenty five years.
But that’s not stopped both the state government and the Brisbane City Council rolling out the red carpet for more pokies.
Why did this happen?
This situation is unsurprising given that the LNP and Labor have accepted more than $9 million in donations from the gambling industry over the last two decades. Last year, political donations from the gambling industry increased by 40% on the previous year.
This is legalised corruption, and it’s caused Australians have the world’s worst average gambling losses, about $1000 per adult each year, leading to greater amounts of suicide, domestic violence, crime & financial distress.
Both the Liberal controlled Brisbane City Council and the Labor controlled Queensland Government are blaming each other for this — when both are equally to blame for hiding these proceedings from public scrutiny and facilitating a massive increase in gaming machines in an area with a large number of gaming sensitive sites.
What needs to change?
Once the Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation has granted a gaming licence, the community has no objection or appeal rights under the Gaming Machine Act 1991, except for a judicial review in the Supreme Court which can be expensive and narrow in scope.
The Queensland Greens have been advocating for appeal rights for the community for years — including campaigning to grant community members the right to appeal gaming licence decisions at QCAT.
Pokies are specifically designed to exploit the most vulnerable in our community. Queenslanders deserve to know if the supposedly independent regulator is giving private companies special treatment to allow even more of these predatory machines in our communities.
The Commissioner has heard from hundreds of locals about the devastating impacts pokies would have on Stafford — and hearing all this pain and frustration, still granted a gaming licence for 50 more pokies machines in Stafford with no reasons stated as to why.
These discretionary guidelines about under what conditions a community impact statement is required, and when and why that requirement is waived, needs to be replaced with clear rights for local communities to get community impact statement processes and their own community meetings directly with the Commissioner.
In 2019, Michael Berkman, Greens MP for Maiwar, led a community campaign against an application for 45 pokies at the Indooroopilly Pig ‘n’ Whistle. The applicant’s community impact statement claimed the application had community support, despite having undertaken no meaningful consultation and more than 80% of the local community opposing it. Other glaring flaws in the community impact statement were overlooked by the Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation in approving the application. The Attorney-General at the time agreed to require the publication of reasons for decisions on a gaming licence but advised that the Queensland Labor Government was not interested in appeal rights.
In 2024, Jonathan Sriranganathan, Greens candidate for the Lord Mayor of Brisbane, announced the Greens plan to ban pokies on Council owned land, like Stafford Bowls Club.
When did this all go down?
I only got involved in November 2022 when a local resident got in touch about Brisbane City Council’s lease transfer — and since then I’ve been piecing together a complicated story dating all the way back to 1996.
1996 |
A community impact statement is conducted following an application to operate 12 gaming machines at Stafford Bowls Club. |
24 September 1996 |
Stafford Bowls Club gaming licence is issued and the site operates 12 gaming machines at the premises. |
1997 |
Crushers Leagues Club takes over operation of nearby Brothers Leagues Club in the Grange and operates 76 gaming machines on the site. |
9 July 2015 |
Stafford Bowls Club gaming licence is surrendered — and gaming machines are no longer operational at the site. |
September 2016 |
Stafford Bowls Club closes as an independent community sports club. |
2018 |
Brisbane City Council conducts a tender process and awards the lease on Stafford Bowls Club to Crushers. |
2 January 2018 |
Crushers lodges applications for a gaming licence at the Stafford Bowls Club. |
30 September 2018 |
Crushers ceases operations at both Stafford Bowls Club and Brothers Leagues Club. |
2019 |
The Commissioner waives need for community impact statement on the basis that “only two and a half years” had elapsed since the cessation of gaming at the site and that because “the Stafford site is located within 2km from where the Crusher previously traded at Grange”, “the [community impact statement] would likely contain the same socio-economic statistics”. It is unclear when the Grange community impact statement was conducted — likely in 1997 when the original gaming licence was granted on the site. |
26 July 2019 |
In an Estimates hearing, Attorney General Yvette D’Ath MP responds to questioning by Michael Berkman MP regarding the regulation of gaming machines, committing to investigating improving transparency and certainty in decision-making regarding the operation of the Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation. |
28 July 2019 |
The Attorney General announces proactive publishing of reasons for decisions by the Commissioner for Liquor, Gaming and Fair Trading in relation to gaming licences in response to Michael Berkman MP’s community campaign at the Pig ‘n’ Whistle. |
23 December 2020 |
The Commissioner refuses Crushers’ gaming application as their Probity Unit concluded Crushers was unsuitable to hold the licence as “the club may be used as device for private or commercial gain contrary to s58(6)(j) of the Act”. |
20 December 2021 |
An internal Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation email between senior members of the Licencing unit notes, “It appears Crushers want another one of those ‘preliminary chats’ before lodging a new application for gaming machine.” A reply indicates the Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation is aware Crushers wants to transfer their application to a different redacted club — assumed to be Brisbane Racing Club. |
3 February 2022 |
Brisbane Racing Club meet with the Office of Liquor and Gaming and follow-up with an email summarising their request that requirements for a community impact statement and advertising be waived. |
21 February 2022 |
Jacaranda Advisory, a consultant for liquor and gaming businesses, prepares a demographic study of a “market catchment area” as grounds for the waiver. The area is defined as four statistical area level 2 regions roughly aligning to the suburb boundaries of Stafford, Stafford Heights, Gordon Park, Kedron and the Grange. No justification is given for why these suburbs were included and why others were not. This study compares Queensland Government Statistician's Office and Australian Bureau of Statistics data for these suburbs — particularly on income, social security rates and relative socio-economic disadvantage — against the entirety of the Brisbane City Council local government area and the state of Queensland. The study also alleges that the rate of gaming machines in the area is less than the city and statewide average per 10,000 people. This study forms the evidentiary basis for the Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation’s waiver of community impact statement requirements. |
16 March 2022 |
An internal Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation email notes that the Office had agreed in the meeting with representatives of Brisbane Racing Club and Crushers Leagues Club to consider waivers before receipt of an application. |
29 March 2022 |
The Commissioner approves waiving the community impact statement and advertising requirements on the basis that the 2019 application had “no objections received from the community”, that the site is “in an area with favourable socio-economic statistics”, that the Office “anecdotal[ly] advise[s] that the premises with standard operating hours rarely attract objections in respect to gaming” and that “it would be highly unlikely an advertising process would identify any concerns not already/intended to be mitigated by the nature of the application, noting again … the reputable nature of BRC” — an application that the 16 March email indicates they had not yet received. It is also not clear who determines if Brisbane Racing Club is a reputable organisation, and whether an organisation’s reputation is grounds to waive consultation requirements. |
2 August 2022 |
An internal Brisbane City Council email requests urgent consideration of the transfer of the lease over Stafford Bowls Club from Crushers Leagues Club to Brisbane Racing Club on the basis that the current lease has a condition that trading commence at the site “no later than 1 April 2023 (under a Sunset Clause)”. A later email also requests Council consider an exception to the requirement to lease Council land only to community organisations — which Brisbane Racing Club is not — at the same meeting. This exception did not appear to be discussed at future meetings. |
27 October 2022 |
Brisbane City Council votes to transfer the lease. |
10 November 2022 |
A local constituent contacts Stephen Bates MP to raise concerns about the lease transfer in Council. |
13 March 2023 |
The Commissioner invites representations under section 55F of the Gaming Machine Act 1991, which does not constitute advertising under section 55C and therefore does not require the publication of reasons for a decision. Inviting representations is generally a process of targeting requests to individuals, but in this case, this was advertised by a sign displayed on the Stafford Bowls Club for fourteen days. |
15 March 2023 |
Stephen Bates MP writes a submission to the Commissioner opposing the gaming machine licences noting the number of nearby gaming sensitive sites and other vulnerable groups near to the Stafford Bowls Club. |
16 March 2023 |
Jimmy Sullivan, Queensland Labor MP for Stafford makes a speech in Parliament condemning the Liberal National Party in Brisbane City Council for facilitating a “closed-door deal” between Crushers Leagues Club and Brisbane Racing Club. |
22 March 2023 |
Jimmy Sullivan, Labor MP for Stafford, requests Victoria Thompson, Commissioner for Liquor, Gaming and Fair Trading, host a private meeting at the Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation by invitation only to residents who had expressed concern about the site in response to the advertisement on the Stafford Bowls Club. There, attendees received assurances from the Commissioner that copies of the comments received would be provided to the applicant, which is a process specific advertisement under section 55C. |
24 March 2023 |
Cr Vicki Howard writes to Cr Fiona Hammond regarding the assignment of the lease claiming that a new tender wasn’t required for Brisbane Racing Club because one had already been conducted for Crushers Leagues Club. |
1 April 2023 |
The sunset clause on the lease to Brisbane Racing Club requiring commencement of trading by 1 April 2023 expires. |
16 April 2023 |
Stephen Bates holds a community BBQ next to Stafford Bowls Club attended by hundreds of local residents. All attendees objected to installing gaming machines at the Stafford Bowls Club. |
28 April 2023 |
Stephen Bates writes to Victoria Thompson providing feedback from the community BBQ. |
21 June 2023 |
The Commissioner approves an additional 50 gaming machines for Stafford Bowls Club for operation between 10am and midnight, seven days a week. |
5 July 2023 |
The Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation refuse to release reasons for the decision. |
9 November 2023 |
Operations have still not commenced at Stafford Bowls Club. As of today, gaming machines have not been operational at Stafford Bowls Club for over eight years and a community impact statement has not been conducted for twenty five years. |