Do we like them?

Do we like James Packer?

Our score: 4 out of 10. A decent chunk of real giving and no anti-LGBTQ+ words found, set against a damning inquiry and a settled claim he denied.

James Packer is the Australian billionaire who spent years as the big name behind Crown Resorts, the casino giant. These days he is best known for what a NSW inquiry found in 2021. The record we could open is thin on his early life, so this is mostly the Crown story.

That inquiry found Crown unfit to run its $2.2 billion Sydney casino because its conduct facilitated money laundering for at least five years, and Crown admitted it was more likely than not that money had been laundered through its accounts. It also found Packer steered the company's operations from afar, with what it called rather disastrous consequences. At the inquiry he admitted to conduct he called shameful and disgraceful.

There is a smaller, messier story too. A former Crown Melbourne security guard alleged in a lawsuit that Packer pushed him on New Year's Day 2016. Packer's spokesperson said he denied the allegations, and the case settled in November 2022 on a no-admissions basis, a day before trial. Back in 2014 he and Nine boss David Gyngell were each fined $500 over a brawl outside his Bondi home, with no criminal record for either.

On the harm test, we found no words or campaigns from him against LGBTQ+ people, women or the planet, and that's honestly the whole list. What we did find is that Australian Electoral Commission data shows a $150,000 donation to the lobby group Advance in 2024, his first political gift in about 12 years. Whether you read that as ordinary giving or as a worrying shift is the reader's call. He is also reported to be among the OnlyFans stake investors, and he declined to comment.

On the good side of the ledger, in 2023 he and the Packer Family Foundation gave $7 million to UNSW Sydney to set up the James Packer Chair in Mood Disorders. That is real money going to research that could help a lot of people. It doesn't cancel out the inquiry's findings, but it counts.

So where does that leave us? Nothing here says he is out to hurt LGBTQ+ people, and he has put serious money into mental health research. But a formal inquiry found his hand on Crown had disastrous consequences, and he settled a claim he denied. It's a close call, not a cheer.