Aussie Business Calls For Relief After Abrupt Bluesfest Shutdown

Bluesfest director Peter Noble estimated a loss of A$10 million to A$11 million ($7.6 million to $8.3 million), a figure similar to when the event was closed three weeks out in 2020 after post-coronavirus restrictions. Bluesfest is the only music festival covered by insurance for COVID due to a happy document mistake, but its premiums tripled in 2021.

“One case of community transmission has shut down a major regional event with a $10 million plus loss that will destroy a business with a thirty-year trading history owned by someone who is risking everything to run his event in a Covid safe manner,” said LPA chief executive Evelyn Richardson.

“This has cost hundreds of jobs, musicians who were about to perform their first gig in a year have been shut down, thousands of people who were attending the seated, CovidSafe approved event have been turned away, and the local regional economy has been severely impacted.”

The Business Interruption Fund is similar to the $50 million ($38 million) insurance net offered by the Australian government last year to the screen industry, and which 41 film and TV productions took advantage of. 

“While the health risks are too great, the financial burden may become just as impossible for some festival operators,” said Julia Robinson, AFA general manager, who called Bluesfest’s cancellation devastating.

In recent weeks, the sector was meeting with federal and state politicians for a return to 100% venue capacity, lifting of state borders, and their solutions considered to get back to work.

“If we had been operating at higher capacities like the sporting industry by now, blows like this would be more manageable and less catastrophic for the entire ecosystem,” she said.

Annoying to some was that Bluesfest’s 150-page COVID-safe document was acknowledged by authorities to be more stringent than any plan devised by sporting codes.  Its 100,000-strong crowd over five days was cut to 16,500 a day.

Asked if he thought the axing an over-reaction, Noble replied, “It would have been nice to have found that we had other options.”

Plans are for Bluesfest to reschedule and Byron council to compensate food suppliers facing 90% wastage. Richardson said snap closures and border restrictions “are killing consumer and industry confidence. At which point do we move to living with Covid? Our industry is getting theatre shows back on stage while we look to October to kickstart our live music sector. We need certainty that we’re not going to be shut down and that our governments can respond and manage community transmission.”