Imagine the sound of slot machines, dice rolling and people cheering. Did you imagine Las Vegas, or ‘Bris Vegas’?
This may be the future for Brisbane with the Queens Wharf Casino project, and while it may paint pictures of glitz and glamour, it also brings about some questions: are casinos good for the city, and why is Brisbane jumping on this casino trend?
The Star Entertainment Group, Far East Consortium and Chow Tai Fook Enterprises are collaborating to create the new Destination Brisbane Consortium, an integrated resort. Brisbane’s existing Treasury Casino will close in 2022 and the new resort development with a casino gaming floor will open shortly after.
According to the Queensland Government, the “new, world-class international casino facility will enable Queensland to compete effectively with similar developments”.
Developers have in their minds images of Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands, the $13 million integrated resort in the middle of their CBD. Although Singapore’s tourism revenue grew 49% in the three years after the resort opened, the amount of problem gambling and crime also grew.
So the argument of casinos is one of social costs against economic benefit.
Research shows gambling can lead to issues of mental and physical illness, domestic violence, neglect and abuse of children, bankruptcy, fraud and other physical crime such as robbery. The Salvation Army Recovery Services Clinical Director Gerard Byrne says it will be gamblers in Brisbane, and their families, who are most affected. “With casinos there’s extended trading hours and it’s not only standardised casino-type gambling but it’s additional poker machines,” he said. “It just compounds an already grave situation for people who have problems with gambling.”
But Destination Brisbane Consortium Project Developer Simon Crooks says measures are in place to make sure this casino does not have a negative impact on Brisbane. The gaming floor of the Queens Wharf project is up two levels, unlike anywhere else in the world, so people “don’t walk straight off the street into gaming”. Mr Crooks also says Queensland has very strict gambling regulations and these will be followed strictly to ensure everyone’s safety and wellness.
The Queensland Government promises that Destination Brisbane Consortium will provide 2000 construction jobs, and 8000 jobs when the integrated resort development is complete. It has also promised “a guarantee of $880 million in casino taxes for the first ten years of operations”. On top of this, in Australia, casinos attract more than one million international tourists each year, which equates to about $5 billion in revenue.
Mr Crooks says this project is not just about the casino floor; it is an ‘entertainment precinct’ that will draw in both locals and tourists.
But Singapore and Hong Kong have the same style of grand resorts, and the Gold Coast’s Sun Casino is part-way through an $850 million transformation, so why Brisbane?
One view is that Brisbane is becoming a ‘global’ or ‘world’ city.
Senior Lecturer in Human Geography Dr Thomas Sigler says the term ‘world cities’ does not have an exact definition, but is a theoretical concept of cities that play a global role. “We think of cities with large, multi-national corporations; large infrastructure like international airports; we think of places that mediate lots of flows … financial transactions, visitors, information and knowledge that [is] passing between people and companies and institutions,” he said. He says Brisbane has had ‘mega upgrades’ in its plan for a long time, in the form of “globally-scaled infrastructures, globally-scaled architectures and up-scaled tourism opportunities”. “That’s where this Queen’s Wharf [project] fits in.” “It’ll put Brisbane on the map and attract economic development that may have gone elsewhere if it weren’t for this project,” he said.
Urban planning professor Neil Sipe, however, says a casino is not necessary the way to expand the city, but, simply put, casinos make money. “Should a casino be the centre piece of a city? I think probably not,” he said. “From an overall development perspective there’s a lot of stuff that will be built that probably wouldn’t have been built were it not for the casino because the casino profits have to pay for all that other development.”
In terms of competing with other cities (like Singapore or even the Gold Coast), Mr Sipe says Brisbane will be able to because the city has something new, “with the new bells and whistles”, but other cities will “play catch-up” and try to build bigger things. “That’s kind of what you see happening in Macau it’s like Macau has tried to out-do Las Vegas in terms of the elegance and opulence of it’s casinos,” he said.
But, Mr Crooks says the goal is not to compete, but to be different. He says the project does not want to see Brisbane compete with other cities, but instead keep people here a little while longer with something new to see and do.
The new casino opens in 2024, but the debate of casinos will continue on long after that.
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