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Crown Casino struck a controversial deal with the Victorian government just before the last election: in return for a highly lucrative 17-year extension to its gaming licence, it promised to re-train 500 of the state's retrenched workers.
But Fairfax Media can reveal that, almost two years after the multi-billion dollar licence extension was granted, just six redundant workers have completed training under the scheme.
And even though they represent thousands of redundant or at-risk workers from the car industry and the Point Henry aluminium smelter, union leaders are in the dark about the Crown scheme.
"Totally unaware of it," said former Point Henry AWU organiser Gavin Penn.
"Never heard it," said Dave Smith, the auto workers organiser for the Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union.
Meanwhile, the late disclosure of a political donation made by Crown to the Victorian ALP in the months after the deal was struck raises fresh questions about the special treatment the gambling giant received before the last state election, and its close relationship with the major parties.
The revelation has also put the gambling giant's taxpayer-subsidised private training facility in the spotlight.
The casino runs two $10 million, 70-staff private training facilities – Crown College and Crown Training – and vocational education insiders estimate they receive up to $5.4 million per year from Commonwealth and state education funds.
Critics say commercial enterprises like Crown that access millions of dollars in public funds for their in-house training organisations represent another "rort" in the scandal-plagued Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector. They say there is no rigorous independent assessment of the quality and value of their courses.
The deal to train 500 retrenched workers at no cost to the state was struck by then Opposition leader Daniel Andrews just weeks before the 2014 election, amid widespread anxiety about the manufacturing sector's terminal decline.
It was represented as the price of Labor's support for the Napthine-government's proposed 17-year licence extension, pokies and gaming table increases, a cut in its VIP tax rate and the promise of $200 million in compensation for any future policy changes that hurt Crown's profits.
At its launch in July last year, then Minister for Gaming and Liquor Regulation Jane Garrett hailed its promise of a new career for workers like the 800 who were laid off at Point Henry in 2014, and those in the beleaguered auto manufacturing industry.
Minster for Training and Skills Steve Herbert called the deal "to retrain 500 retrenched workers a fantastic example of what Government and industry can achieve when working in partnership".
However, the AMWU's Dave Smith said few car industry workers would be helped in the scheme's first two years. It came too late for major layoffs at Ford in June 2014, and too soon for the 1000-strong Holden and Ford workers due to lose their jobs from October this year. The livelihoods of a potential 40,000 to 50,000 are at stake when the car industry closes in 2017.
Despite politicians' and Crown's public promises about blue-collar workers, the scheme was quietly expanded to include new migrants, indigenous people and "women in crisis" at its launch. Even with its expansion, Crown admits only 53 people have enrolled under the scheme so far, only 10 of them retrenched workers.
Completion and employment rates are just a fraction of the headline figure. Only 25 of the trainees have qualified, six of them retrenched workers. Just 12 participants are in jobs after completing the training.
Victoria's Minister for Skills and Training denied 500 Places was a failure and said it would "ramp up" to help car workers.
Meanwhile, in June, the Australian Electoral Commission quietly posted a late disclosure from Crown indicating an additional $20,000 donation the casino made to Victorian Labor in the months following the party's support for the casino's licence extension.
The donation took its contribution to the state ALP to $43,000 compared to the Victorian Liberals' receipt of $45,000 in 2014-15. The late disclosure adds to disquiet raised about the state Labor's relationship with the casino after Lloyd WIlliams was recorded telling Daniel Andrews that James Packer would "kick every goal he can" for him in the election.
David Hayward, dean of the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT, defends the expansion of the training scheme, rather than seeing it as a broken promise. "It's reasonable for governments to be flexible with agreements [when] it's someone who would otherwise be unemployed," Professor Hayward said.
However, others see Crown's dilution of the schemes' original promise as a "rort". Gambling researcher at Deakin University Linda Hancock says Crown has a pattern of badging itself as a good corporate citizen but its schemes were often self-serving. "They want [to hire] recent migrants so they can talk to their client group [who are often from non-English speaking backgrounds] – there's nothing kind about it," Professor Hancock said.
Crown has received numerous industry awards for its training and employment schemes, including nomination to the Hall of Fame in 2015 at the Victorian Tourism Awards. One four-year casino veteran, who asked not to be named, said the training standard is high and facilities excellent, but aspects can feel like propaganda.
"It's geared towards ingraining an ethos that gambling is not at all harmful to society and that Crown does wonderful things by employing thousands of locals and paying millions in tax," the staffer, who left the casino this year, said.
Neither Crown nor the Victorian Department of Education and Training would reveal how much public funding is provided to the casinos' RTOs. However VET experts estimate that Crown's annual public subsidies range from $1.2 million to $5.4 million.
They also raise questions about the rigour and independence of the training's quality testing.
Five of Crown College's accredited qualifications initially failed to pass an audit by VET regulator, the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) in July last year. ASQA declined to comment on the specifics. A Crown spokesperson said the college made changes to meet compliance requirements.
Professor Hancock says Crown staff surveys she undertook for her 2011 book Regulatory Failure? The case of Crown Casino showed the pitfalls of in-house training schemes, included evidence of managers' fudging or rubber-stamping staff through the Responsible Service of Alcohol and Responsible Gambling courses that are required by the casino's licence.
Deputy federal secretary of the Australian Education Union Pat Forward says enterprise RTOs like Crown's (and companies including McDonalds, KFC and Woolworths) are the "darlings of government" but there are widely held concerns about their public good.
"Oftentimes these employers are getting public funds to deliver very narrow, workplace specific training with a real question mark about the extent to which the skills being delivered there are portable between workplaces even of a similar sort," Ms Forward says.
A VET teacher with decades of experience, who declined to be named, says requiring new hires to do government-funded in-house courses was a "rort" for the employer and could disadvantage employees down the track, as they could never do another government-funded qualification at the same level again, but would have to pay full fees themselves.
Professor Hayward said he had toured Crown College and found its facilities outstanding. But he is sceptical of the rationale for publicly funding its RTO.
"Given the training is crucial to its business, why is government paying for that training at all?" said the economist. "They'd do it anyway, and they are making a ton of money."
In February, Crown's first-half results recorded revenue from its Australian operations increased 4.2 per cent to $1.7 billion