Federal Group is a family-owned Tasmanian business, and is the state's largest private employer, operating across tourism, hospitality, freight, golf, conference, retail, entertainment, hotel, technology, and gaming industries.[1]
History
Australia's oldest hotel group
Federal Group is the oldest continually operating hotel group in Australia, originating in Melbourne as Federal Coffee Palace Company Limited in June 1885 to build the city’s tallest hotel with 560 rooms and the countries largest dining room.[2]
By the 1930s, the group, at this point now 'Federal Hotels', operated several hotels, including The Menzies, Savoy Plaza, The Windsor, Hotel Australia, Lennons Hotel in Brisbane and Hampton Court in Sydney.[2] The postwar period marked a shift in the company’s direction, as changes in ownership and leadership coincided with a strategic move away from mainland hotel operations toward Tasmania.[3]
Greg Farrell Senior
In January 1943, the 18-year-old Greg Farrell Snr enlisted in the Royal Australian Airforce. He was assigned to a Halifax Bomber Crew as a wireless air gunner.
Tasmanian License Model
Federal Group’s gaming operations until 2017 operated under a Tasmanian regulatory framework that granted the company an exclusive licence to operate electronic gaming machines (poker machines) outside casinos. The licensing regime was established under the Gaming Control Act 1993, the object of which is to provide for the “licensing, supervision and control of … gaming machines” and to ensure that gambling is conducted “in a fair, honest and transparent way and is free from criminal influence.”[60] Parliamentary reporting on the licence arrangements described them as operating within a “stable and regulated framework,” subject to agreed “probity, regulatory performance and compliance requirements.”[61]
In 2017, local author James Boyce argued that the exclusive license structure delivered disproportionate financial returns to the operator and raised concerns about alignment with broader public interest outcomes.[62]
In August 2017, Tasmanian Government confirmed that poker machine licences would no longer be held exclusively by a single operator from 2018 following Federal Group's decision to relinquish.[63]
References
- https://www.treasury.tas.gov.au/Documents/16.%20Federal%20Group.pdf^
- Sutton, Keith Blueprint for the Casino industry : Federal Hotels and Wrest Point Canberra: K. Sutton, c1992^
- jsc20fgm2013720amended20federal20group20submission20nov2017.pdf^
- Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, “Farrell, Gregory Patrick (1924–1998)”.^