Former Annandale Owners’ Fury At Council U-Turn

The former owners of Sydney's The Annandale Hotel have attacked Leichhardt Council after Mayor Darcy Byrne publicly stated he'll do everything in his power to retain the venue – now under the banks' control – as a live music destination.

Brothers Matt and Dan Rule reluctantly handed over control of the venue to receivers Ferrier Hodgson mid-February after the financial burden of the venue became too much. The venue's woes sparked Byrne – who became Mayor in September last year – into action. The Mayor has since been extremely vocal about live music and this week passed a live music policy through council and invited the receivers to apply for longer trading hours on the venue's license.

Today Matt Rule has posted on his personal social media account claims that after years of neglect and legal battles, Leichhardt Council have left them broke.

Republished on theMusic.com.au with permission, Rule alleged that during their ownership the council “funded a campaign by three vexatious lying residents” and expressed anger that “[The council is] now gifting the receivers who work for the bank a late license the minute we are out on our arses?”

He said that noise complaints against the venue, “cost my brother and I in excess of 200K in legal fees, [resulted in] years of lost revenue, [and required] hundreds of hours writing counter claim submissions to the Liquor Board… whilst holding us up by their legal team in those same Liquor Board hearings [the council] changed the zoning where the Annandale sits to make it a non late trading area, restricting us from obtaining a late license despite eventually winning in the Land And Environment court.”

He continued, “[They] put us through unimaginable amounts of stress as we scratched every day to figure out how to pay the bills to keep the doors open… [and] chose to ignore the fact that throughout all of this we had the support of their own council assessment officers, the local police and 98 percent of the local residents.”

According to the brothers, the actions of the council, “Ultimately contributed to us losing a business we struggled to for 13 years to keep alive, our family losing money and my brother and I stone motherless broke.”

Byrne has yet to respond to theMusic's requests for comment.

Rule finished with, “You wanna save live music at the Annandale Hotel give us back the probably $500k all of the above more than likely cost us so we can have our business back, hand us the late license and support the two people who 13 years ago, when it wasn't trendy or politically advantageous to support live music, put their balls on the line and had a massive fucking crack!”

Read the Mayor's response and an investigation into past councils here.