Opinion
RSL open to putting pokies in the sale starter’s gate
Depending on your point of view, the RSL’s 52 Victorian pokies venues are keeping the veterans charity afloat, are morally indefensible or are a legal product that allows people to socialise and gamble in moderation.
New RSL Victoria president Dr Mark Schröffel is open to RSL sub-branches offloading their pokie venues, as community sentiment to them sours.
The RSL is open to selling off its pokies venues.Credit: Virginia Star
At the same time, Schröffel stresses that the RSL is a responsible owner of pokies, and prohibition does not work.
“I’m not defending gaming or gambling, I don’t like it personally,” Schröffel tells CBD.
“But because we’re a community organisation, our staff know the people who are coming in, they keep an eye on it. They’re not motivated by profit or bonuses or anything like that.”
So, would Schröffel support the sale of pokies, perhaps to racing organisations rather than the gaming giants?
Dr Mark Schröffel, the newly elected president of RSL Victoria at ANZAC House.Credit: Joe Armao
“It’s possible,” he says. “My focus is actually on the veteran services. That’s the business side of it, and it’s important, and I’m interested in how that affects our position and our reputation in the community.”
And they’re off? They might be tipped to head the field but the form is very hard to pick based on the responses CBD received when contacting Melbourne’s big racing organisations to gauge their interest in buying more pokies from local RSLs.
Victoria Racing Club, which describes itself as the world’s largest member-based racing club and hosts the Melbourne Cup Carnival, has one pokies venue at Flemington Racecourse and no plans to purchase more.
Melbourne Racing Club oversees Caulfield, Sandown and Mornington racecourses and is the single biggest club operator of gaming machines in Victoria with 14 hotels and clubs that make a combined $50 million a year. Sadly, it was a non-starter on discussing this topic.
Flemington Racecourse.Credit: Getty Images
But recent reporting by The Age’s Danny Russell revealed the MRC had been ordered to run a risk assessment of its lucrative gambling venues after a 13-year-old boy twice played its poker machines.
The MRC was fined a further $60,000 this year after three of its venues – the Peninsula Club, Steeples in Mornington and Ringwood hotel The Coach and Horses – allowed customers to use poker machines outside permitted trading hours on Good Friday in 2024.
Moonee Valley Racing Club, which boasts former News Corp big-wig Peter Blunden as a committee member, has three financially healthy gaming venues and entitlements until 2042. But Moonee Valley was coy when we approached the club for comment, and would not declare if it would be a starter in the race.
Bill’s back, again
Bill Ireland, the former BRW Rich Lister, former bankrupt and former associate of Kerry Packer, has been there, done that.
The irrepressible Ireland, now aged 75, is back raising money and says he has “a lot of energy left”.
Way back in 2011, a debt-laden Ireland vowed to go into retirement and “sail a boat around the world”.
John Shakespeare cartoon of Bill Ireland in his Mariner Financial group days. Credit: John Shakespeare
But CBD can reveal that Ireland is now raising money for his six-month-old, AI-backed financial services business. Artificial intelligence, start-ups – now, that’s tapping the zeitgeist. Ireland tells CBD his fledgling business, Equity Risk Exchange, is looking to raise $2 million as part of its first capital raising.
“There’s some private family money,” he says, declining to name names. “I’m not interested in listing it for a while.”
Ireland made his name by founding financial services business Challenger in the ’80s, and soon landed on BRW’s Rich List worth an estimated $127 million. But he was booted out of the business by the Packers after it drew the attention of regulator APRA.
He then set up the Mariner Financial group, which went to ground in the wash-up of the GFC. When asked how many businesses he has founded, Ireland says quite a few. “Some were more successful than others.”
Barnaby quits university body to focus on David Littleproud
Nobody on the conservative side of politics has taken to the latest term of parliament with such gusto as Barnaby Joyce.
The Nationals MP has commanded the headlines since parliament’s return last month with his net-zero revolt, had the press gallery eating out of his hand and impersonated a bull on live TV – for some reason.
Michael McCormack and Barnaby Joyce.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
The moment Joyce was found sprawled on a Canberra pavement muttering profanities into his phone is well past, and the former deputy prime minister has quit the booze (although privately finds his new life a bit dull). He is, in the words of one-time Nationals leadership rival-turned-frenemy Michael McCormack, “virile”.
Meanwhile, Joyce appears to have cut down on other extracurricular activities. For the past two years, Joyce was a member of the University of New England’s Standing Committee of Convocation, an elected governance body representing staff and current and former students at his alma mater.
No longer, with Joyce removing the role from his register of interests last week. The committee recently held elections for its next two-year term, and CBD hears Joyce wasn’t on the ballot, choosing to step aside and give someone else the opportunity.
David Littleproud probably wishes Barnaby gave up the Nationals leadership so easily. Joyce successfully toppled McCormack for that job in 2021, and is now reportedly ready to help Mic-Mac do the same to the current leader.
With all that argy-bargy in the Nats party room, no wonder he’s too busy for UNE.
Stamping his authority
Terence Stamp, the British actor who starred as trans woman Bernadette in the hit film, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, might have died at the weekend at the venerable age of 87, but he may still make another mark in Australian film.
Terence Stamp as Bernadette beside Priscilla the bus in the 1994 Australian film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.Credit: MGM
Writer-director Stephan Elliott, who announced last year that he planned to make a sequel, took precautions given Stamp’s ill-health meant he might not be able to join co-stars Guy Pearce and Hugo Weaving on set once the film is funded.
“They took him into a studio and had him shot from every angle digitally,” Priscilla’s Oscar-winning costume designer Tim Chappel told this masthead’s film writer, Garry Maddox, earlier this year. “He’s given permission that, if for some reason, he doesn’t make it, he can still be in the film.”
Chappel said “a lot of the sequel is seen through Bernadette’s eyes, and she’s got early stages of dementia. But the happy dementia”. The bawdy tagline is “even old showgirls deserve a happy ending”.
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