WORDS BY TOM PARKER
A chat with Guy Palermo, the man leading the charge to save Melbourne’s live music venues.
On Monday March 16, Melbourne’s beloved rock music cauldron The Bendigo Hotel shut its doors as the coronavirus flexed its muscle. Venues were dropping left, right and centre in the wake of an unprecedented parasite that no one ever anticipated.
The slippery slope began on March 13 when it was revealed that non-essential indoor gatherings of 500 people would be forbidden; on March 18 that was reduced to 100 people. For Bendigo Hotel owner Guy Palermo, that was the writing on the wall – few venues have a capacity of less than 100 people…
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Palermo and his petition have been running side-by-side with Donovan and Fiona Patten from the Reason Party, who themselves have devised their own separate proposals to take to parliament.
Aspects of Patten’s proposal include introducing a moratorium on the immediate costs venues face as well as revisiting the Creative Spaces programme currently in place – providing artists with more affordable options to make music when things die over.
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