It has just come to light in a Victorian Commission for Gambling Regulation report that the Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL) pays only $1 a year for their Crown casino complex in Melbourne. The report was tabled in parliament yesterday.

The PBL pays the $1 for the Southbank site for the first forty years of their contract and then will have to pay the market value for the remaining years. The contract is signed for a 99 year lease. The lease began in 1993 so the company still has a ways to go before they began paying the market value.

Gary O’Neill, a Crown spokesman, told Fairfax newspapers that the site of the casino was considered a “derelict piece of land, which had been unused for a long period and couldn’t be built on until it was cleaned up.”

Since 1993 the company has spent a licensing fee of $200 million, almost $2 billion to develop the complex and $2.7 billion in taxes and charges have gone to the government. The casino made $370.1 million in profits last year when the casino netted $2.03 million in revenue.

Also mentioned in the report was that the casino “continues to be at the forefront of Australian casinos, meets the requirements of an international world-class casino complex and has a satisfactory degree of operational compliance.”

The report also stated that the casino needs to work harder to detect people who have stolen money to gamble and also do something about under age gamblers. In the past five years the casino has had one hundred and forty eight minors caught trying to play.



- 2008-09-12