Clearly, widespread reform of the gambling sector and its impact on problem gamblers in Queensland was in the frame.

One witness, known as Witness C, who was addicted to poker machines, and was not even sure if she had ever been to a Star casino, said she could not be a responsible gambler when she was dealing with machines that were designed to addict the user.

“At the deepest, darkest times I believed the only way out was to die,” she said.

Witness A, a reformed compulsive gambler and an indigenous man who said he would bet on two flies walking up a wall, said even the attempts he made to self exclude himself from a gambling outlet failed because he could just go to another outlet where he wasn’t excluded, or if it was a chain, like the TAB, to an outlet where he wasn’t known.

He detailed the devastating impact that his addiction had on him and his family and how measures to prevent it, like time limits or pre-set limits on the amount that could be gambled, were also only part of the solution and easy for someone to step around.

He said professional help, not staff of a casino, needed to be in place when someone needed it.

A tearful Witness B who was once held captive for three hours by her knife-wielding, estranged husband, detailed a tortured existence of violence and stalking because of his gambling addiction which she first noticed when he went to the then Jupiter’s Casino on the Gold Coast.

Her children were also deeply affected and needed counselling.

“I don’t want any other family to go through what we went through,” she said

Counsel assisting Jonathan Horton, QC, also said the inquiry would cover areas of regulatory oversight of casinos and who should pay for it and how. There was also a question of what regulatory model was best for Queensland and what provisions were in place if a casino operator was found not to be suitable to hold a licence.

The evidence of other aspects of the industry doesn’t mean it will go well for Star. The inquiry has already uncovered that $55 million was funnelled through China Union Pay credit cards as a customer’s hotel costs rather than as gambling funds, which was in breach of foreign exchange laws in China and has the potential to allow for money laundering.

Also, Star allowed people who were banned by the police in NSW from gambling at the Sydney casino to gamble at either Brisbane’s Treasury casino or the Gold Coast facility.

The inquiry would also be shown five case studies of money laundering and taken through Star’s procedures and commitment to addressing it.

Counsel assisting Jonathan Horton, QC, said The Star’s interim chief executive and former chief casino officer in Queensland, Geoff Hogg would be the last witness to appear before the inquiry.

He said Hogg would be questioned on his knowledge of and involvement in the China Union Pay issue, particularly in relation to dealings with the regulator in 2015 and 2016 on how the cards should be treated.

“KPMG reviewed The Star’s AML (anti-money laundering) program in May 2018 and found in our submission that it was seriously deficient. What did Mr Hogg know about this and why has it taken so long to get where we are now some four years later?” he said.

He said the inquiry would “seek to understand from a senior management perspective how such problems could exist without coming to the notice of senior people.

“Generally speaking (there) seems to have been very serious problems in terms of offering inducements to high risk, high value customers, some of them, on no view, should have been invited to come to Queensland given the unavoidable suspicions that would arise about their involvement in criminal activity,” Horton told the inquiry.

The inquiry will continue until Thursday.