Professional gambler and Museum Of Old And New Art founder David Walsh has revealed that despite the Museum losing upwards of $6 million a year, he won’t be pushing to open his long-awaited casino in Tassie under current conditions.
ABC’s 7.30 outlined the workings of the proposed deal between the
State Government, the
Farrell family’s
Federal Group – who currently own and operate every pokie machine in Tasmania – and Walsh: currently, the Farrell family carry the sole gambling license in the state and operate two casinos on the island. They planned to relinquish their monopoly by accepting Walsh’s
proposed Monaco casino to the mix, but only if the Federal Group could extend their license indefinitely.
Walsh backed out. According to him, pokie machines are “insidious”, and taking that deal would ensure their place in Tasmania – a state where “the correlation between poker machines and low income earning areas seems to be positive [where] it clearly should be negative.”
Monaco would be totally pokie-free.
The Museum operator, who
made his fortune gambling, is no stranger to the risks of a flutter. Still, the income Walsh expects he could draw from a new casino – income he could put back into the Museum – isn’t worth the continual societal damage he believes pokies cause.
On last night’s broadcast, Walsh also said he believes Federal Group’s
decision to hold off on their own proposed $100 million development in
Port Arthur was a ploy to force the State Government to extend their license past 2023. Today, State Premier
Will Hodgman said although the museum has no guarantees of support, they
“consider David Walsh and the team at MONA to be a critical and very important and valued partner in our state, in our community, and in our economy.”
Currently the Government has not put the license to tender, but Walsh said he believes the matter could influence the results of the next state election.
“I’ve not had any negative feedback, everyone’s saying, ‘Go you good thing, this is great, the pokies have been bringing down Tassie for too long”.
“I would think that they’ll be at least one of the major political parties will take an anti-monopoly position into an election and when that happens, if that happens the community will make it obvious where it stands”.
You can watch the full episode of 7.30 here.
Via ABC.
