WA Festival Scene Faces Dire Future Without Government Intervention

Following on from a nine-month pay dispute with WA festival Disconnect, production company Rockwest has called for the state government to introduce new regulations to ensure the festival scene doesn’t collapse.

Earlier this week, Rockwest and a number of other suppliers revealed they were still awaiting payment from the festival, despite Disconnect promoter Spring Fever stating in June all outstanding payments were being settled.

Spring Fever director Chris Knight told The Music on Monday the outstanding payments were due to a dispute over how much was owed, but Rockwest’s David Coleman claims that is not the case.

“As far as we’re concerned, there is no dispute. We’ve had no correspondence or contact from them,” Coleman told The Music.

Rockwest supplied lighting, sound and staging to five stages at last December’s Pinjarra event, and estimates outstanding bills to be several thousand dollars.

Coleman said promoters failing to settle accounts was becoming an increased problem across the board, and could impact the WA festival scene greatly if the government doesn’t step in.

“It’s hard enough to survive at the moment and if guys like us start closing our doors, there isn’t going to be a festival industry in WA, because you can’t have these shows without us,” Coleman said.

“There are companies in Perth that are having auctions and all kinds of stuff to try keep their doors open, and we definitely don’t need this kind of stuff happening.”

Event organisers already need to go through local government to obtain various permits when putting on festivals, and Coleman says the current system needs to be more regulated.

“There needs to be some sort of state government regulation, even if it’s at a local government level, to ensure that anyone who holds an event with over a crowd of say 2,000 has sufficient insurance to ensure they have funds to pay at the other end of the show.”