Trump’s name will turn to dust, just as every other dictator’s name has’

 My greatest fear is that one day we may wake up and our democracy is gone. We cannot afford to let that happen.”

— John Lewis: Good Trouble, 2020 documentary

Malcolm Knox: ‘Trump’s name will turn to dust, just as every other dictator’s name has’

Walter Marsh

It may sound strange: satirical novels set in Stalin’s Soviet empire, by an Australian journalist, about Trump’s America. But Knox’s darkly hilarious books have arrived when global politics so often feel like a farce

Google Maps Changes Lake Ontario to Lake America. Totally pathetic and stupid. Maps are wayfinding tools and this toadying political change will help no one find their way.

Leaked recordings show what Star executives really think of regulators

Star Entertainment chief executive Bruce Mathieson jnr has complained the casino operator exists only to pay “disproportionate” fines and may need further relief from regulators to survive, in a meeting that calls into question how seriously the company is taking its compliance obligations.

The Australian Financial Review, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald have obtained a recording of a meeting of senior executives held earlier this month. The meeting is led by Mathieson jnr, whose family is the biggest local shareholder, and Star Sydney boss John Koster, and suggests the company is struggling to balance its commercial and regulatory obligations.

Star Entertainment’s chief executive Bruce Mathison jnr, Star Sydney chief executive John Koster and chief financial officer Charlie Diao. Tim Beor

In the monthly executive meeting, an exasperated Mathieson jnr is recorded criticising the cost of enforcing compliance and problem gambling, while Koster grills colleagues, including chief financial officer and interim chief risk officer Charlie Diao, for going beyond what was required by regulators to ensure the casino could win back its licence.

“We get these fines, which I think are just disproportionate to what is happening, and … all we’re doing is existing to pay a fine,” Mathieson jnr said.

“We keep on restricting ourselves tighter and tighter. We’re coming to a pretty critical time with licences and all that sort of stuff, but it should be quite obvious to everyone that unless we can breathe … every time we get up to breathe, we cop another hit.”

Star was asked to pay $10 million in fines over system failures in financial crime risk operations in June, and was last week ordered to pay $500,000 for allowing an underage boy to gamble.

The casino giant lost its licence to operate the Sydney casino in October 2022 following a NSW government inquiry run by Adam Bell SC, which heard evidence about anti-money laundering failures inside its flagship precinct.

Star chief executive Bruce Mathieson jnr said the casino operator only exists to pay fines. Oscar Colman

The licence has since been overseen by Nick Weeks, a government manager who also controls Star’s licences on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane.

Star wants the NSW casino regulator to hand the licence back, but that is subject to a range of conditions, including financial stability and sufficient anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism processes.

Over the past four years, Star had paid hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for its historical misconduct and breaches of its internal processes.

On Saturday, a joint investigation by the Financial Review, the Herald and The Age detailed serious concerns about Star’s compliance and problem gambling systems. Eight insiders, speaking on the condition of anonymity, also warned of an erosion of governance under Mathieson jr’s leadership.

Mathieson jnr wrote to staff on the weekend and said the business was continuing to speak with stakeholders about the “matters raised” in the investigation.

Star did not respond to questions about what was said at the meeting, saying the company’s focus was on the release of its results and annual report on Monday. The spokesman said the company had regular monthly compliance meetings that discuss matters from various business units.

NSW Independent Casino Commissioner Philip Crawford has ordered Weeks to conduct an urgent review into the allegations outlined in this masthead. He said Weeks had last week provided him with a report detailing governance issues as he weighed whether to return to Star its gaming licence in Sydney.

NSW Independent Casino Commissioner Philip Crawford has asked for a review into Star’s conduct following Saturday’s investigation. Dominic Lorrimer

“The NSW Independent Casino Commission’s concern has always been to ensure NSW casinos uphold community expectations by maintaining responsible and compliant operations which are resistant to criminal infiltration and equipped to minimise gambling harms,” Crawford said.

“However, the [commission] has requested a supplementary report from the manager to outline any additional matters arising from the article that are relevant to The Star’s NSW operations.”

Koster is a former senior executive at Bally’s who was put in charge of Star’s flagship Sydney casino in March. Bally’s, which operates casinos in the US, has held a 38 per cent stake in Star since December. The Rhode Island-headquartered company’s chairman, Soo Kim, is also the chairman of Star.

Mathieson jnr is the son of publican Bruce Mathieson and a former director at Endeavour, which owns the Dan Murphy’s bottle shop business and a string of pubs with pokie machines. He became chief executive of Star following the completion of a $300 million takeover with Bally’s, which lifted his family’s stake in the business to 23 per cent.

The purpose of Star’s monthly executive meeting was to discuss future challenges and processes. The recording reveals a heated debate over the purpose of critical compliance measures that were designed to help Star win back its casino licence. Koster urged Star’s management to stop “unnecessary garbage”.

“If we don’t need to do something, don’t do it. Don’t add to what we’re required to do,” he said. “We’ve constricted ourselves inside the requirements of the [internal control manuals]. If you guys are talking about adding more stuff on top of what we got, and it’s not a regulatory or ICM requirement, you’re going to have to think about that again quickly.”

Star’s precincts across Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Sydney operate according to strict internal control manuals (ICMs) – rule books that explain how to run the business safely. A large portion of the monthly meeting was related to how the casino monitors transactions, which form part of its ICMs.

Koster also discussed implementing KPI bonuses to make sure no prevention of play notices were being unnecessarily executed and that they were being prioritised from most valuable to lowest, based on the average bet they played over a session.

Prevention of play, known as a POP, is a temporary measure put in place to ensure a person can’t gamble inside the venue. They are coded based on different reasons for the temporary ban. A source of wealth check is a compliance process used to determine how a person made money.

“We go to the highest customer. As soon as that highest one comes back, we take care of that,” Koster said. “My direction to the financial crime team, which is supported by my boss and another boss, is that you guys start that process on the most important customer. How many times do I have to say this?”

Star’s Sydney casino had its licence suspended back in 2022. Sam Mooy

At another point, Koster said that “source of wealth checks” were taking too long. The process, he argued, should take days, not weeks.

“This has to get fixed. This is unacceptable … there’s no way anybody should get POP-ed any more. Nobody should get POP-ed unless they have refused to give us a source of wealth information, or we have to go back to them because for some reason they didn’t give us whatever we needed to begin with,” he said.

“This has to get cleaned up, and if somebody says to me the backlog has to be addressed and we have to jump from one customer to another customer and then back to this customer, I don’t understand that. The good news is our POPs now seem to be falling behind our reactivations, which is the first time that that’s ever happened. So that’s a beautiful thing.”

The group discussed an alternative methodology to improve the backlog of suspicious matter reports – notices sent to AUSTRAC when the casino is concerned about a transaction or customers. They also discussed a failed attempt to ask the NSW regulator to remove a rule that related to transaction monitoring and tracking concession cardholders, such as Centrelink customers.

A critical focus is on the time it takes to complete processes. Star has already loosened rules around the source of wealth checks, potentially making it far easier for people to gamble under multiple identities. The company now uses single-source verification checks for customers instead of fuzzy logic verification – a method that uses algorithms to go through data and identify matches by calculating a similarity score.

“Speed is what we need. We keep on having paralysis of analysis,” risk officer Diao said. “We just have to stand our ground and tell [Weeks’ team] that it’s not productive.”

Koster was scathing of Star’s fraud scoring model, which is used to identify government concession holders and track whether they start spending thousands. “I would call out the people that are asking us to do this and point to that – What are you looking for? There’s nothing here,” he said.

Mathieson jnr responded: “Let’s be honest, it’s [Weeks’ team] who is. It’s a lot of effort for what? I think we’re all asking that question.”

Koster stopped the meeting at various points to ask whether Star was taking steps beyond the obligations of its ICMs.

“I think we should avoid doing that – personal opinion,” he said.

Mathieson jnr said he did not disagree and asked whether he needed to draw a line with Weeks. He argued that a fine issued to Star for allowing a 16-year-old boy to gamble tens of thousands of dollars using a fake ID last week, showed how Sydney’s carded play system was being used in a way that disadvantaged the casino. Unlike in Queensland, patrons in Sydney are required to use a mandatory identification card if they wish to gamble.

“There’s got to be some point in time we actually [draw a line],” he said.

“I’m just mounting an argument at this time, and it comes off the back of this fine last week. I know it’s a fine for an underage thing, but it’s still a weapon. It feels like it’s weaponising the 100 per cent card of play. It’s fantastic what’s been achieved, but now we’re penalised for what it’s delivering, not being sort of steered for benefit.”

“The only way to get anywhere is, you know, once we find out our licence scenarios … to go back and ask for some sort of regulatory relief.”

Star has already received regulatory reprieve from the NSW government, which has twice delayed plans to bring cash limits from $5000 to $1000 per day. In 2023, it received a $310 million tax reprieve in exchange for a commitment to protecting 3000 jobs at its Sydney precinct.

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ATO finds 6000 property sales that may have skipped paying tax

ATO finds 6000 property sales that may have skipped paying tax 

Michelle Bowen Aug 30, 2026

The tax office is chasing the owners of 6000 investment properties sold across the country in the five years to mid-2025 who failed to lodge a tax return disclosing the results and could owe tens of thousands of dollars each in capital gains tax.

The discrepancies – which could total $66 million, although the Australian Taxation Office has not officially put a figure on it – are the result of the ATO’s increasing use of technology to cross-reference information from a wide range of federal, state and territory records, including property sales.

Profits or losses made on the sale of an investment property must be disclosed in the owner’s income tax return the year a property is sold as any profit is subject to capital gains tax.

ATO assistant commissioner Anita Challen said the taxpayers were identified using data matching. 

Assistant commissioner Anita Challen said the ATO does not have an estimate of the tax potentially owing; however, based on 2023-24 ATO data, the average net capital gain was $30,644 and the average CGT payable was $11,031 per taxpayer, which would suggest the potential outstanding tax bill across 6000 properties to be about $66 million.

This aligns with previous enforcement activity in this area. According to its website, in the 2016-17 financial year, the ATO identified “over 5431 cases where real property dealings were not treated correctly, raising an additional $65 million in revenue”.

Challen said the ATO identified the outstanding tax returns as part of its “ongoing compliance and assurance activities” using data matching, where it cross-references information against various data sources to identify anomalies and instances where tax may be owing.

It found that between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2025 about 6000 properties had been sold and the owners had failed to lodge an income tax return disclosing their profit or loss.

“We receive income data from a range of organisations such as banks, state revenue offices, land titles offices, motor vehicle registries, insurance companies, share registries, sharing economy platforms, and crypto asset exchanges – to name a few,” Challen said.

Challen said while “most taxpayers try to do the right thing, property rules can be complex, and errors can occur even where there is no deliberate attempt to avoid tax”.

Robyn Jacobson, senior advocate at the National Tax and Accountants’ Association, said while some of the taxpayers may have been deliberately trying to avoid tax, others may be retirees who have not had to lodge a tax return for years, or foreign residents who have sold an Australian property and were unaware they needed to lodge a tax return.

The sale of a property does not necessarily mean tax is payable as some taxpayers may be eligible for exemptions or concessions, but “a net capital gain triggers a lodgment obligation whether or not tax is payable”, Jacobson said.

Properties sold that were identified as principal places of residence – which are exempt from CGT – were excluded from the ATO’s compliance work.

As a first step, the ATO is sending letters to the taxpayers giving them the opportunity to lodge a tax return for the period covering the property transaction by October 31, or to dispute the ATO’s information before further enforcement actions is taken.

“Where taxpayers do not engage with us or fail to take action, we may consider further compliance activity in line with our normal compliance processes,” Challen said.

“Ignore the letter and the ATO can issue a default assessment on its own estimate,” Jacobson said.

“The onus then reverses; the taxpayer must prove not just that the ATO’s figure is wrong, but what the correct figure is. Without records, that can be very difficult. A default assessment also attracts a penalty of 75 per cent of the tax,” Jacobson said, adding that interest charges could also apply.

Changes to CGT were announced in May’s federal budget with many property investors likely to face higher tax bills after the changes begin on July 1, 2027.

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Michelle Bowes is deputy wealth editor at The Australian Financial Review. She has been a business journalist for 25 years and is the author of Money Queens: Rule your Money, an award-winning personal finance book for teenage girls. Email Michelle at michelle.bowes@afr.com

Who Actually Makes Your Supplements?

Worse on Purpose: “…Supplements never had that golden age. No one has ever been able to judge the quality of a capsule by inspecting it. Even so, the category has grown even more challenging for consumers to navigate over time. Our regulations are where this story starts. Since 1994, no supplement maker has been required to demonstrate to the FDA that its claims about its products are true, or even that they contain what the label claims, before selling them. US lawsplace the burden of proof entirely on the government itself. The statute reads: “the United States shall bear the burden of proof on each element to show that a dietary supplement is adulterated”….Given how quickly names change hands in this market, it’s not easy for me to give you an unqualified recommendation to buy from any particular company. What I can share are the small handful of companies that stood out for good reason during the course of this research. Only three of the forty-eight supplement brands now in the Ledger got the Approved rating. They all have one thing in common: they maintain strict control over their manufacturing process.

• Standard Process grows its own ingredients on a certified organic farm in Palmyra, Wisconsin, and makes the supplements 1.4 miles from the fields. Its organic certifier, not its marketing department, states that at least 75% of the raw plant material starts on that farm. It carries no third-party seal of any kind.
• Nature Made owns four plants in California and Alabama, and holds nearly two thirds of the products in USP’s verified directory. It belongs to Otsuka, a Japanese pharmaceutical company.
• NOW Foods owns its plants in Illinois and Nevada and runs its own analytical labs inside them. In January it became roughly 30% employee-owned. It also buys competitors’ products at retail and publishes the results, which is where the vitamin C testing above came from.
• You will notice that nothing is rated Avoid in the Ledger for now. To rate a brand Avoid I need a documented act by a named company. This industry makes that standard nearly impossible to uphold. When the FDA shut down seven years of production in Edgewood, the recall named ABH Nature’s Products; a company no consumer has ever bought from. I could not find a clean list of the brands affected anywhere.

Every brand named here is on The Brand Ledger. When one changes hands, or quietly drops a verification mark, that is where I’ll record it…”