FEATURE ARTICLE -
Issue 102: December 2025, Reviews and the Arts
Author: Quentin BeresfordPublisher: NewSouth PublishingReviewer: Brian Morgan
Do you, like me, get annoyed when you are bombarded with gambling advertisements on TV, when you only want to watch the news or a particular sporting event live?
“Hooked” is a great name for a book of 345 pages which certainly explores the murky depths of the gambling industry in Australia and its association with major sporting clubs and with politics and the power it has exercised as a supporter of political parties and politicians as well as its ability to bring down politicians who don’t do as the industry demands of them.
The gambling industry is identifiable with a who’s who of Australian identities, such as Kerry and James Packer, numerous Prime Ministers, State Premiers, Ministers for Gaming, major sports and so on.
As I prepare this review, there is controversy over a leading Rugby League player who, it is rumoured, is looking to move to a breakaway team in order to be paid more than the $1m per annum that he apparently receives today. How can a sport justify paying its players such amounts and are they really worth such payments? Where does all that money come from, you might well ask?
Much of this book is devoted to the ongoing issue of people who are addicted to gambling. Over the years I have been involved professionally in a number of matters arising from stealing to fund a gambling habit; families losing their homes to gambling; and formerly successful business people losing everything because of the insatiable desire to gamble and I have felt overwhelming sadness and have experienced the feeling of frustration which arises from trying to help those who don’t seem capable of being helped.
Hooked provides a very in depth and comprehensive history, in particular, of the emergence of the poker machine phenomenon in Australia; how it has provided Clubs (including sporting clubs) and venues which have obtained these machines with huge windfalls of money; and how the casinos have thrived both with the pokies and the custom of their “high rollers”.
There are, I believe, strong similarities to the cigarette and tobacco industry in its heyday when we had the Marlboro man and others on our screens and smoking was portrayed as being “manly”.
As its name suggests, Hooked dives into the murky depths which we, in Queensland, have seen with the Star Casino group and its financial problems; stories of high flying overseas gamblers being feted in order that they might gamble large sums here; and the apparent failure of the checks and balances to prevent problem gamblers from being “hooked” and with similar histories with casinos in NSW, Tasmania and Victoria, in particular.
When you read Hooked, you will probably vaguely remember many of the events it describes of it but it still takes a great researcher to put it all together for the reader. Beresford has done this for every State of Australia as well as shining a light on the involvement, at the Federal level, of gambling giants who have been able to cause the rise and fall of Prime Ministers such as Julia Gillard. His chapter on our present Prime Minister will leave you shaking your head, no matter what political persuasion you consider yourself to be.
I like the names of several chapters, such as “The mafia comes to Australia”; “Vegas Down Under”; “The death of gambling reform” and “High rollers, private jets and bags of cash”.
I strongly agree with the statement of the author at pg. 214 when he says,
“If a tsunami of gambling ads blanketing mainstream media each year does not constitute predatory corporate behavior, then what does?”
I also agree with his observation at pg 290 that, “Both the major parties have turned a blind eye to the growth of Big Gambling, swayed by the surge in jobs, advertising and sporting revenue, by the state taxes that have been generated over the past 30 years and by the donations and lobbying”.
The author refers to many political identities, including the late Mervyn Everett from Tasmania, Deputy Premier, Attorney General, Queens Counsel, Senator, Supreme Court Judge and Federal Court Judge, whom he, perhaps, patronisingly, describes as a “former divorce lawyer” and suggests that Everett may have been corrupt.
I want to dispel that suggestion. Everett led me on many criminal and civil matters over a period of at least 10 years and I never saw nor heard anything to suggest that he was other than a devoted labour man who showed a real care for people. I had heard the story, referred to by Beresford, of Everett handing out money in the Parliamentary dining room but had never heard this ascribed as a reason to suggest he was corrupt. Those who told me about it at the time put it down as a harmless joke.
As an aside, I had dinner with Everett QC at his home, two nights before he died, just after his judicial career had finished.
He had returned to the Bar, the next day, as he rang me at 5.30 am to tell me he had been asked to lead me in another matter on which I was expecting to be briefed. The meal was cooked by him, using fish that he had caught that day. He was about to embark on studying for a PhD.
One cannot help but feel the power of the gambling lobby; its blinkered approach to high rollers being flown into Australia on Casino jets; passengers apparently being cleared through customs without any baggage or other checks; and the many stories now permeating our news of how this lobby is so powerful that its tentacles appear to have caught so many politicians and persuaded them to cease attempts to rein in the lobby’s influence.
In Queensland we have heard, at first hand, the stories about Crown and Star as late as this year. Had any other company or business suffered such financial issues, they would have been in liquidation but, as this study shows, the power of those behind the thrones of the gambling industry is enormous.
I thoroughly recommend this great analysis of the Australian gambling industry to all and, in particular, to our politicians whose heads remain in the sand.
