Australia and EDM have always had a love-hate relationship. While the residents of Australia might like the music, the government doesn’t quite appreciate it as much. They specifically seem to dislike the festivals themselves. They recently increased the “Police & Safety” fee by 1250% on the local Australian event, Mountain Sounds Festival. This led to the festival cancelling only one week before it was supposed to happen. This was not only absolutely absurd, but also not fair to festivalgoers.
Electronic duo Peking Duk took to Facebook and had this to say about the fee:
“Dear Australia, it breaks our heart to say the NSW Government has well and truly crossed the line.”
They write this because this Police & Safety fee increased from $16,000 to $200,000 in one year. This was a festival that reported no drug-related deaths or violent crimes the year prior. They only had 49 drug detection cases. Peking Duk proceeded to take shots at Gladys Berejiklian, a politician of New South Wales.
Berejiklian responded to the festival organizers about the fee:
“There are rules in place. We want young people to have fun, we want more tourism to the Central Coast and other places. But the festival organisers just have to obey the law. It’s not just about making a quick dollar, it’s also about keeping the people who turn up safe.”
It is hard to say who is in the wrong here. We do believe the festival should have probably budgeted more accordingly, but this fee should have been put into place more than a week prior to the event. Mountain Sound organizers claimed they were quoted a different price on January 18th.
You can read their statement about the incident below.