Call For New Brisbane Festival Hall

Queensland’s opposition party leader John-Paul Langbroek called for a new Festival Hall to be built in the heart of Brisbane.

He said that a 4,000-capacity venue was needed as an alternative to the 13,500-capacity Brisbane Entertainment Centre (BEC), which is 16 kms away.

The original Festival Hall was closed in 2003 by the government.

Harvey Lister, chairman and CEO of AEG Ogden, which operates the BEC, argued, “It is naive to think that both a large arena [BEC] and a new mid-sized arena could both be operated in this marketplace without significant Government operations funding. The current situation is that the BEC operates commercially without any governmental subsidies at all.”