Was reading through the tribunal submissions (I know, I know .. surely there are better ways of passing the time).. and it doesn't seem like the Dogs are pretending like they are good things (the Pokies). In fact, the submission barely mentions it at all and focusses on the positive points of the proposal -- ie. that Vic Uni gets a cutting edge sports science faculty, the area gets a pretty good sporting facility, and the Dogs get to finish up the Whitten and not waste more of the state and federal governments' money in VCAT padding lawyers' pockets (reading between the lines).

I am totally against exploitative gambling facilities (I probably went over the top in my protestations in an old thread with Sedat -- believe me, I hate Crown, for example, with a passion and have a T-shirt describing it as a 'hive of scum and villanny -- Mos Eisley Cantina, anyone?), but this is a case of weighing up positives and negatives, and while there are some negatives associated with this, especially for the residents of Edgewater (who I still argue can best afford the facility in social terms), the positives outweigh it. If the pokies cannot be moved, Vic Uni loses a whole faculty (and associated enrolments), the Dogs really get into strife, and the Whitten never gets upgraded and all the money just goes down the drain (or lines more lawyers' pockets).

The original blame lies with the Dogs allowing pokies in the WO in the first place -- and a bad conceptual redesign of the entire proposal to link the redevelopment of the WO with the Edgewater approval (so that the whole thing falls down if one isn't approved -- that's just silly). Is it possible for the Dogs to just shut down the pokies in the short term instead of relocating them? That way the WO project is disassociated from the Edgewater "Hilton" and can resume/continue construction, while the Dogs negotiate the Hilton project seperately.