If you’ve missed Succession’s Kendall Roy, and his gift for puking corporate gibberish, then your cravings may have been partially satisfied by Gillon McLachlan’s recent appointment as Tabcorp’s managing director and chief executive – and his dressing of the announcement with some delectably brazen horseshit.

Former AFL boss and pompadoured Master of the Universe McLachlan encouraged commercial arrangements between the league and gambling companies in his decade as chief executive – an enthusiasm that spawned the game’s saturation with betting ads. In recent years, fan surveys have revealed growing irritation with their obnoxious ubiquity.

The AFL Fans Association, which conducts the poll, said in 2023: “Whilst there is some recognition of the need for responsible gambling and fans’ right to gamble on AFL if they wish, there is a clear consensus that the volume of gambling advertising is morally inappropriate and should be banned given the social and family impacts.”

The saturation, and the public’s concern with it, was enough to inspire a parliamentary inquiry in 2022, which found “overwhelming” evidence of social harm.

Gambling companies crafted statements suggesting their tender self-reflection: “Australian families should be able to watch live sport without being bombarded by gambling advertising,” Tabcorp’s previous chief executive, Adam Rytenskild, said.

Dear reader, I’ve left a dangling thread. Let me return to McLachlan’s words upon his appointment as Tabcorp chief executive a fortnight ago – but prepare yourself: it will inspire either nausea or nostalgia for Kendall. “Tabcorp is a wagering, broadcast and integrity services business and the challenges of growing it are appealing,” he said. “It’s about creating entertainment for our customers in a safe way and providing a unique customer omni-channel entertainment offering across digital, retail and the media business.”

It’s remarkable, in its way, this meeting of arrogance and emptiness. “Words are just, what?” Kendall Roy asked. “Nothing. Complicated airflow.”

Last year, while still the AFL chief, McLachlan appeared before the Senate inquiry into online gambling. “We will continue to do our job, but you are asking about whether wagering income would be replaced,” he said. “Again, I am not trying to be argumentative, but I do not think so – no. That is the question and I am just trying to answer it … We’re not in denial of the fact that this is a timely review, but one of the considerations for you is the impact on the income for not-for-profits. So I felt the need to be explicit about that.”

If you missed that, McLachlan was unsubtly suggesting the financial precariousness of the AFL – as a “not-for-profit” – if it was forced to limit gambling revenue. McLachlan repeated “not-for-profit” so often that, had you no idea who Gillon McLachlan was, you might have thought he was leading Save the Children and not a cultural and financial behemoth.

“Do we choose to participate with our partners, with wagering providers? Yes, we do,” McLachlan said. “We do that for the reasons I’ve talked about at length, which are that it would go on without us and therefore the money that we receive, we reinvest. We’re a not-for-profit, so we actually think that’s a community benefit. We like to also have relationships with the wagering partners so we can influence bet types, get access to information and protect the integrity of our competition.”

The sum of McLachlan’s testimony was: trust me. The AFL is a virtuous non-profit organisation that invests portions of its golden rivers of gambling revenue into the mitigation of problem gambling – and beyond. Were it not for the AFL’s charitable investments, and the sound financial management that permits it, society would become colder, poorer and sadder. Let us not deny the financial support that, in turn, supports the “community”.

Wasn’t there something peculiar, though, and unacknowledged, about the fact that this revenue source was so problematic a percentage would be devoted to helping those afflicted by it? As McLachlan confidently spoke of “balance”, he was really describing a wickedly closed circle.

In 2013, McLachlan’s predecessor as AFL chief, Andrew Demetriou, launched the season with a mawkish and grandiose speech: “2013 is our chance to do great things for our game, to reset the foundations that have been shaken, and to drive our destiny to new outcomes, new successes and new pride,” he said. “2013 is the year that we remind everyone that Australian rules football is the greatest game – it’s authentic, it’s beautiful, it’s eternal and it’s ours.”

The next year, Demetriou did the authentic and beautiful thing, and joined Crown Resorts – a hive of laundered drug money and scandalous indifference to its legal obligations. Crown’s chairman, James Packer, welcomed the appointment: “Andrew brings to the Crown Resorts Board his vast experience in managing a complex organisation, including dealing with multiple stakeholders, as well as an excellent understanding of the Australian consumer and media.”

Well, sure. And then, seven years later, the former chief justice of the New South Wales Supreme Court, Patricia Bergin, after leading an inquiry into the company, found it unfit to hold a gaming licence. She found an arrogant and reckless culture, and the “stark reality for Crown is that it failed to ensure that the operation of its casinos were protected from criminal exploitation”.

Demetriou resigned, in bitterness and indignation, railing against Bergin’s “unfair” criticism.

After his retirement from the AFL, it wasn’t just to Crown that Demetriou lent his “excellent understanding of the Australian consumer and media”. I suppose it would have been improper, selfish even, to withhold his insights from others. Predictably, Demetriou became a promiscuous board member.

Of Gandhi, George Orwell wrote that saints should be considered guilty until proved innocent. I have a similar rule of thumb for those public figures who’ve never seen a corporate board they didn’t want to join.

The folks you want in public life are those who, once they leave, are too busy gardening or cooking for their families to continue nurturing their status and hiring media agencies to help convince the rest of us that they’re not sickly dependent on maintaining influence.

But that’s the game: ingratiate yourself with powerful circles, keep their names and numbers and transform your glib self-regard into an air of virtuous authority – such are the talents required in the world of sports administration and attracting those profitable sinecures afterwards.

Public life attracts freaks – and they have a habit of upholding each other’s influence. Andrew Demetriou always struck me as a well-balanced individual, in that he has a chip on both shoulders. Unlike his successor, Demetriou was not born to wealth and always seemed intent upon humiliating past doubters with his ruthless ascension. He was abrasive and self-absorbed, but much of our public life is influenced by the private psychodramas of wilful and unimaginative men.

A reminder: the AFL is beloved and culturally entrenched and there’s no shortage of people who could serve as its custodian. Our media has a habit of conferring mystique upon the administrators of our great cultural institutions, or at least ratifying their self-importance, when it’s the institutions themselves that possess the real gravity and distinction.

Anyway, Gillon McLachlan now heads Tabcorp. It’s both grimly funny and unsurprising, and proof he inhabits a cosy ecosystem that’s well furnished. So it goes. Let it not be said, though, that some of us haven’t noticed the obvious: the previous two AFL chiefs – whose tenures span almost the whole of this century to date – jumped immediately into gambling companies.

If these public figures possess rare will and intellect – are defined by clear-sighted devotion to the public good, as they keep telling us they are – it’s curious that they almost always lend themselves to the pitiful industries that previously sponsored them. Gathered together, the résumés of our titans of public life resemble a human centipede.