Chronology
Australian casino licensing: a timeline, 1968-2021
A single referendum. Openings in five places. Two reports at the end of it. Not one licence on this page was issued by the Commonwealth, because no such licence exists here and none ever did — which is why the *paper* travels laterally, state to state, rather than descending from a capital.
Dates first. Then what each one changed. Where a day is not on the record here, the month stands alone.
What sits here
- Dates: one referendum, five openings, two inquiry reports.
- What each date changed, in a line or two.
- Not the present framework and not the advertising rules that differ by state — those are the guide's.
- No venue on this page is presented as somewhere to place a bet.
State by state, one parliament at a time
Licensing sat with the states, and the states moved at their own speed. A casino licence here has always been an instrument of a state or territory: its own act, its own conditions, its own supervision. Tasmania settled the first one by public vote in 1968 and opened in 1973. The mainland watched.
So what follows is not a national policy arc. It is a set of separate decisions, taken in separate capitals, that only looks like a sequence once the dates are put on one page.
1968 to 2021
The dated spine
Eight entries. The last two each carry a pair of dates: an inquiry that opens, an inquiry that reports.
- 14 DEC 1968
Tasmanian referendum
A public vote settles the country's first casino licence. Fifty-three per cent yes — a margin of a few points, not a landslide — under the Reece Labor government.
- 10 FEB 1973
Wrest Point Hotel Casino opens
Sandy Bay, Hobart. The first legal casino in Australia, in the state holding a fraction of the mainland's population.
- 12 DEC 1985
The Adelaide Casino opens
Not a purpose-built resort. The licence goes into the 1928 Adelaide Railway Station building: existing masonry, existing floor plan.
- NOV 1985
Jupiters, Gold Coast — soft opening
Queensland's first. Doors before the ceremony: the official opening follows in February 1986. The month is on the record here; the day is not.
- 29 JUL 1994
Casino Canberra opens
No gaming-machine floor whatsoever; the tables and nothing else. Rare here even now.
- 2001
Two statutes, two levels of government
The Commonwealth passes its interactive gambling law. New South Wales passes the Gaming Machines Act 2001, under which publishing gaming-machine advertising is prohibited in that state.
- 21 JAN 2020 · 1 FEB 2021
The Bergin Inquiry, New South Wales
Opens 21 January 2020, presided over by the Hon. Patricia Bergin SC. Reports 1 February 2021: the operator found unsuitable to hold its licence, and 19 recommendations on the regulatory framework.
- LATE FEB 2021 · OCT 2021
Victorian Royal Commission
Ray Finkelstein AO QC is appointed in late February 2021 to examine the casino operator and the licence. The report is delivered in October 2021.
Ten years of nothing. Then a run of licences.
Close to thirteen years separate Wrest Point from the Adelaide Casino. Then the middle of the 1980s arrives and the map fills in: Jupiters in soft opening in November 1985, Adelaide on 12 December, the Gold Coast ceremony in February 1986.
Mind the interval. Nothing federal to copy, so every mainland parliament wrote its own bill and argued it out on its own floor. Each of them, though, had something to gesture at: rooms open in Hobart and trading since 1973. Ten years of looking. Then openings, several of them, inside a very short span. Read that bunching off the structure — licences held by states — and not off the year itself.
The inquiry years: 2020 and 2021
Under a month separates the two. New South Wales reports on 1 February 2021; Victoria appoints its commissioner later the same month.
New South Wales — the Bergin Inquiry
Hearings from 21 January 2020. The Hon. Patricia Bergin SC in the chair. Findings down on 1 February 2021: the licence-holder unsuitable to hold it, and nineteen recommendations aimed at the framework around it.
Victoria — the Royal Commission
Late February 2021, an appointment in Victoria: Ray Finkelstein AO QC, heading a Royal Commission on the operator and the licence. Report in hand by October. Another instrument, another jurisdiction — the same company at the centre of it.
The chronology stops at those delivery dates. What the recommendations became — the separate casino regulator New South Wales stood up afterwards, the conditions now written into a licence — is the present framework, and it is set out on the guide.
How to read the dates
- November 1985 and late February 2021 are recorded here as months, because the day is not fixed on this page.
- Every other entry carries a day.
- Nothing has been rounded to make the run look tidier, and no entry has been added to fill a gap.