But Crown Sydney’s marketing brochures highlight the fact that its gambling facilities are for people with serious money to spend.

A $10,500 bar tab will get a punter through Crown Sydney’s VIP gaming room doors at Barangaroo. This figure is based on Crown’s rewards program for Barangaroo which, ironically, does not specify how much gambling is needed to reach the Gold and Platinum status which is needed to gain entry to its gaming facilities.

It still represents a significant change from James Packer’s original vision of Crown Barangaroo as a playground for Chinese high rollers.

“Key to the success of these integrated resorts has been their ability to attract Chinese tourists. China’s wealthy are spending increasing amounts of time and money on their quality of life, with luxury travel their leisure activity of choice,” he said in 2011 as plans were made for a Sydney casino.

He cited a statistic from the respected Asian investment analyst Dr Marc Faber: “Eighty per cent of Chinese travelling outside the country for the first time head for a casino.”

Carruthers said Crown would not ignore the potential of the Chinese market over the longer term, but it would require more patience as issues with China’s COVID lockdown policy, and geopolitics, play out.

“China will always be an important market for Australia as a tourism destination. They have their own challenges, it’s going to take them a while to recover from that,” Carruthers said.

He needs to make a success of a casino operation which is only just finding its feet after a decade of rancour. He inherits Crown’s disastrous regulatory and legal challenges that have meant the casino operator must now prove itself fit to hold a licence in any of the states in which it operates.

“I think the social license aspect was lost over a period of time. It’s been found again, I can assure you I’m going to show you that,” he said.

In 2019, an investigation by this masthead and 60 Minutes revealed Crown had been infiltrated by international criminal syndicates and money launderers.

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Since then, government inquiries in NSW, Victoria and Western Australia have ruled it unfit to hold a casino licence, preventing it from opening - until recently - the high-rise casino at the $2.2 Barangaroo site.

Crown Barangaroo finally opened the first stage of its gambling facilities in August, nearly two years after the hotel, but it is operating on a conditional licence until the end of next year.

This week, the NSW casino regulator slapped rival casino The Star with a record $100 million fine for its failure to stem criminal activity and money laundering within its Sydney casino and suspended its licence.

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