There’s a lot to lament about the arrival of Brisbane’s new Star, a casino, hotel and handful of food outlets lit up like Las Vegas but overshadowed by its recent past of hosting criminal activity and its very likely future of financial failure.

We can lament that the Queen’s Wharf parkland precinct, of which Star is part, is actually just a promising construction site on the north bank of the Brisbane River.

We can lament that the heritage buildings that made up the original European settlement were meant to be restored but still remain shuttered.

Many of us will lament that the opening of a glitzy new gaming floor will not only take business off local clubs, but will take money out of the pockets of families unable to resist the gambling urge.

And we can certainly lament that Star’s financial survival now depends on the combined goodwill of its bankers and a willingness by the Queensland and NSW governments to forgo gambling taxes so Star can have a fresh try at refurbishing its balance sheet.

Most of all, we should lament that Star’s directors, managers and regulators were blind for several years to the industrial scale money laundering happening in its Sydney, Brisbane and Gold Coast casinos. And still, apparently, without criminal sanction. Talk about going easy on crime.

But this column is a lament for the behaviour of the NSW regulator which, ostensibly, has taken the lead on unravelling Star’s wrongs and the absurdity of its grandstanding to refuse to guarantee the return of its gaming licence. Queensland is following the NSW lead.

Its latest rationale for this is the slow change in culture of Star which has shed the tiresian board and management that oversaw the billions channeled by crooks through gaming floors (principally in Sydney).

This rationale was published Friday. It credits Star with some cultural advances needed to overcome its flaws but not enough and among its identified flaws are a determination to challenge the regulator and a continuing tendency to put profit first. Umm, it’s a casino, not Lifeline.

Star is the operator of the casino and hotels which form part of Queen’s Wharf which is being developed by the Destination Brisbane Consortium. It is a half owner of that consortium along with two Chinese investors, Chow Tai Fook and Far Eastern.

Right now, it has limited chance of financial survival thanks to some poor management, cost blowouts in Brisbane, heavy and justified penalties for its flagrant breaches of the law and the hamfisted denial of a gaming licence.

But is a regulator, miffed by resistance from the listed company it effectively controls, right to make financial life-or-death rulings on the basis of hard-to-define culture? Culture matters but the regulator’s demand to accelerate its improvement is akin to the council demanding you check fire alarms while your front bedroom is on fire.

The Queensland Government (despite the failings of its own regulator) is entitled to be mightily annoyed at this situation which is seeing the state’s showpiece investment pushed over the edge by a mercurial interstate regulator.

Senior bureaucrats and their ministers will need to decide in coming days and weeks whether to assist a financial bailout of Star – just what they need in the run-up to an election campaign where they will be also looking for money for housing, hospitals, roads, cost of living relief – all the usual polltime promises.

The backdrop to this is years of tension between Star and its partners and the government over a continual push to change plans in a way the government sees as not honouring contract obligations. I have heard this lament from several people within government over several years.

The evidence is there for all to see. Yes, Brisbane has a new bridge, yes we have a casino but no, we don’t have the global leisure precinct that has been promised nor the parklands for locals that have been started but most likely won’t be finished unless the taxpayers now forgo some much needed revenue.

On Sunday morning, I walked through the fenced off park then the casino lobby which, by Day Three, featured a broken stubby on the steps – at least it was a XXXX stubby, not a fancy imported beer!

The really sad thing in all this is the situation of the staff of the casino, largely good people dedicated to the entertainment of others but now justifiably worried about their jobs.

They shouldn’t be in this situation and nor should we be as citizens who have handed over 10% of our CBD to a fading star that has fallen well short of its promise.