John Lewis, Ocean Shores
Twelve festivals of 50,000 people and eight festivals of 25,000 is approximately 800,000 people using our Shire’s limited facilities and possibly an extra 400,000 vehicles a year using our atrocious roads. Just one greedy organization, now foreign controlled, wants to bring in 32 times the Shires’ population into the Shire every year.
Add Bluesfeast”s proposed numbers to the above and the future tourist-numbers are truly mind-boggling – they will make the residential suburbs around those festival sites un-liveable.
Byron Shire has become one giant Mega-Festival of Greed and when one does the maths with ticket-prices, claimed punter-numbers, etc and compares that with the actual community contributions these hippy-capitalists make towards maintaining our local infrastructure it is millions of dollars in profit to cents “contributed”.
Only about 5% of our Shire’s population – the “business elite” and their lackeys, actually benefit in any way at all from these PRIVATE festivals and their never-ending expansion. The rest of us stand in lines in shops or queue in service stations, banks, chemists, etc, and use overcrowded roads that are falling apart.
There are a lot of reasons why the PRIVATE mega-festivals in this Shire should be restricted to two per year and capped at half their present numbers, not just this Shire’s traffic problems and lack of resources/services.
Though hundreds of millions of dollars have been made by these greedy organizations in the last 20 years their contribution to the upkeep of our communities is monetarily pitiful and culturally very-negative. These are essentially very-lucrative “private parties” for non-residents held behind razor-wire and surrounded by Media bullshit.
It is about time we had a “Festival Tax” of at least $30 per head/day, fixed up our roads/drainage, etc, and cleaned-up the rest of the Shire. Byron Shire has to be, apart from its’ “iconic tourist areas”, the most unkempt and ill-maintained shire in NSW.
A Festival Tax would bring $20million a year just from NBP(Splendour in the Mud) alone into Councils’ coffers if we are to be inflicted by what they propose. Add Bluesfeast’s punters and our Residential Rates could be lowered drastically, as well.
Then if we added a commercial “bed-tax” of $10 per head/night and got the commercial-tourism/landlord-industry paying its’ fair share towards the upkeep of the Shire we might be able to afford a proper garbage-facility to burn our own garbage instead of being seen by the rest of Australia as a bunch of environmental-hypocrites who are bludging on the health of the residents of Ipswich Shire.
Everywhere in Australia people work for industries that make a profit. Sometimes xenophobes complain that they are foreign owned; others appreciate that they employ people and know that Australians too can own businesses in other countries, Some employees are local; some locals go and work in other areas. In general those industries pay rates on land that they use and if they make a profit pay tax to the Commonwealth. Everywhere in Australian people pay rates. In many areas the industries attract visitors who pay rates in their own area. In some areas the rates base is low and in other areas heavy industry or low population densities imposes particular costs on local road maintenance – these do not apply in Byron Shire. When we move about the country we use the facilities paid for by local ratepayers and they use ours. The Byron Shire might like to go down the track of charging visitors to use its facilities; the Gold Coast might do the same for all the North Coast people who go their for shopping, health education. The QLD government might like to start charging NSW residents to use its hospitals and Unis. At the macro level some imbalances of need and resources are worked out at COAG and within states there is balancing between councils but overall there are swings and roundabouts in these things. Most people grumble about them but accept they have to pay their rates, and do not urge their Council to tax visitors or particular industries – that would lead for a tit for tat and increased administrative costs. So pay your rates like others do, vote in councilors that are not profligate and use the monies efficiently and wisely, and forget about taxes that others do not impose and that are essentially rent-seeking on one particualr industry.
Well said John Lewis but how about a sliding scale on each ticket say 25-20.00 per day for large festivals and for smaller festivals a lower cost we would l believe have over 100 festivals now per year. To Petrus really 14,500 people paying for approx 2 million visitors per year it used to be only 1.2 or around that figure, but now add in the Festivals and more are coming all over the shire. simple user pays, we pay, small shire being loved to death.