SMUG with the self-satisfaction that comes with being a "reformed" gambler, I have to say I've been enjoying the outcomes of various high-profile investigations into the operation of a number of Australia's casinos.
I'm not sure which element provides the most enjoyment in terms of schadenfreude, that wonderful German word for the pleasure derived from another's misfortune.
It's been a delight to read the testimonies of various company directors - replete with their Order of Australia gongs for service to the community - wriggling about as they blame everyone else for whatever wrongdoings are being exposed at the time.
The latest case involves Star Entertainment, with its 11 directors being taken to court by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission over alleged breaches of their directors' duties for having insufficient focus on the risks of of money laundering and criminal ties to Star's Pyrmont, Brisbane and Gold Coast casinos.
But whatever negligence has been proved in previous cases against owners and their hired representatives, they are only in this situation because the Australian political class ignored all of the warnings about the dangers of bringing a "casino culture" to this country, and whose successors are now professing shock and horror that our gambling houses have attracted the criminal class and their adjutants, the money launderers.
I mean, honestly, who'd have thunk it?
Obviously, it's no real surprise, but I do find it interesting that Australia's politicians and regulators, forced into action by the egregious behaviour of some of these companies, will look anywhere for answers except where they should be looking, which is at themselves, to say that the whole idea of state-sanctioned gambling is a moral cesspit full of monsters.
Even the term "responsible gambling" is a hoot. It's a tautology, an Orwellian contradiction in terms, because gambling is in itself an irresponsible action.
It's the risking of money on a game of pure chance.
Or, in racing, for example, it's the punter believing they have a better handle on things than the house when it comes to appraising the odds on offer for the bet in question.
But whether it's horses or dog racing, cards, poker machines or the roulette wheels and other attractions of the standard casino, the house always has the advantage.
And as we have known since before the years when Australia was deciding whether or not to bring our existing illegal casino industry out into the open by legalising it, casinos the world over are in a continual back and forth battle between the regulators on one side, and the customers, on the other, who might look at the casino not as a way to make money, but to wash it.
I know how easy it is to become entranced by gambling. I grew up near Rosehill and my first visit to the track as a 15-year-old in 1975 had me hooked.
I put $1 each way on Queensland horse Dalrello to win that day's George Ryder Stakes. It won, I had $27 in my pocket, and I backed it again when it beat Purple Patch in the Doncaster Handicap soon after. "How easy is this!" I told myself.
I was hooked. As Year 9 students, my school mates and I immersed ourselves in racing.
We'd wag sport when the Wednesday gallops were at Rosehill, and get set with the bookies in school uniform! But meeting with jockeys and greyhound owners, among others, we also learned a bit about racing's underbelly.
I ran a small bookmaking operation from school, but gave the whole lot up in disgust after pinching $20 from my mother's wallet to cover a debt.
I have rarely had a bet since.
Hopefully, racing has cleaned itself up since my time, present stewards' inquiries notwithstanding.
Those with good inside information will tend win more than the mug punter, but one of the biggest gambling syndicates in Australian history - which includes the founder of Tasmania's MONA gallery, David Walsh - built their winnings, in part, by sharing the commission the TAB pays to the operators of its outlets.
They put so much turnover through their local TAB outlets that the operators were happy to share the commission they received from TAB headquarters, meaning they were betting with the house, as well as against it.
Which brings us to the casinos, and the way that crime syndicates know that the weight of averages means they will get most of their money back - if not all of it - if they stay at it for long enough.
For them it's about washing dirty money to make it clean. To make it usable.
There were so many warnings about this in the years before The Star was built on the site of my old workplace, Pyrmont power station, that no-one in power could say they didn't know.
Yet governments, lured by the prospect of income from gambling taxes, seemingly shut their eyes to the real risks they were leaving themselves and this country open to.
Now they're blaming the corporate types running the show, when in reality the directors - even if they are found in breach - had an impossible task from the beginning.
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