[defrost]

I'm a pragmatist and the Crikey story has a hanging shoe waiting to drop.

Who ultimately did fund the 36 months campaign?

If you're a skeptical fan of Crikey, like myself, perhaps you're also an eyebrow raised sometime watcher of Gruen and understand that the crowd Peter Carey once ran with don't do anything for nothing .. even the 'free' content is agency self promotion.

The money trail here runs cold in the vicinity of the sports betting lobby and there's form on their ability to run distraction not to mention the returns on 'grooming' gamblers via particular kinds of campaigns that work as well on young dumb adults as they do children.

There's been no follow up on gambling advertising and they're still free to run the kinds of ads they likely may have had to phase out if focus hadn't shifted to saving the children.

That seems a success worth paying for ... even if the receipts aren't out in the open.