Calculate the true benefits of festival

“… an estimated 3 million dollars will be injected into the local community as a result of this year’s festival” and “encouraging both tourism and trade while promoting the many attractions Baw Baw Shire has to offer”. Really Beyond the Valley?

I do love a good, vague, sweeping marketing statement. Where to begin? The event is set up so that everything is sold on site so there is no need for patrons to leave the ‘parklands’ of Lardner.

Apart from the music, the motivation is to elicit as much cash as possible onsite from patrons over the four days.

Also, according to many patrons on the BTV Facebook page, on Sunday when temperatures soared patrons were originally told they could not get pass-outs and if they left the venue they would not be able to return. Doesn’t sound very encouraging of tourism or trade outside of the venue to me.

Then the simple definition of local which suggests funds being injected into the local community will remain in the shire.

That then eliminates the food and alcohol vans; none of which come from this shire and are mainly sourced from inner Melbourne areas. It would also exclude multinational businesses where profits go back to head office such as supermarkets, liquor outlets, fuel outlets, fast food restaurants, the Mercure and even Bunnings, Reece and Middendorps.

Suggestion has been made that the employees of these multinationals employ people specifically to cater for the BTV event and that makes them inclusive of the local community.

I am pretty sure that most businesses in the shire already have higher staffing levels to cater for the Christmas/new year period for both locals and genuine tourists who come to the area.

So that significantly narrows down the field of local businesses who shared in the estimated $3 million.

The traffic management people are Melbourne based; the majority of cafes and restaurants and retail businesses in Drouin and Warragul were closed over the period. Frankies and Warragul Country Club may be the exceptions and benefited.

One would expect Lardner Park would also have received a good cash injection. With contracts for this event supposedly to be held at Lardner for another five years, the board must be tickled with the increased numbers being squeezed onto the property and asset improvements.

You could count the donation to Lardner Primary School – but that is really compensation for the annual clean-up. Likewise, the ‘funding’ to some of the impacted home owners surrounding Lardner Park to vacate their homes whilst the event is held is more confirmation of the inappropriateness of the venue for such an event than an act of kindness. Personally, I wouldn’t classify either of these as an injection of funds.

By now many of you are throwing knives at me saying I am against the event. Hold off on the hate mail, as that is not true and never has been. Speaking for myself and many of those in the community surrounding Lardner Park, we only contest that the venue is not appropriate for an event of this type given we are in a populated rural area.

So, back to the $3 million injection into the local community. There is one other perspective that the previous promoters adopted. In their opinion, local meant any business east of Melbourne CBD.

That would then include all the multi nationals who have head offices east of Melbourne; and I guess the government departments for essential services. So the $3 million is not injected into our local community, per say.

So have an open mind when you read the marketing pitch of the community benefits that this event brings to the local community; as most of the benefits do not stay and are not injected into Baw Baw Shire.

Helen Case, Drouin

Whilst I was watching the cricket on TV, I had this idea to write a book. It is going to be a comedy about climate change and contain all the funny things the climate alarmists said are going to happen.

I’ll start with the most obvious one and that is Extinction Rebellion who has told us that we are heading for Armageddon.

And then there is that group of so-called scientists who said we are going to disappear off the face of the earth in 10 years if we don’t solve climate change.

Then Tim Flannery said that we are going to be underwater because of climate change. Anyone underwater yet?

Here is a question. How do we know bushfires are caused by climate change?

Answer. Ask an arsonist in prison for lighting bushfires caused by climate change. That might be a bit subtle for some.

Listen to the experts the alarmists say. Who are the experts? Prof. Mickey Mouse who signed a document that proved climate change was real?

Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old girl, who has no qualifications of any kind? I want to know if she knows what trains are made of. Here is the answer. The primary materials used to manufacture trains are steel, aluminium, zinc and plastic.

How dare she travel on a train that needs electricity provided by coal-fired plants to be created.

Then there is the claim that Greenies don’t want to take people’s livelihoods away. An indepth analysis of the Greens’ policies at the last election showed that they would wreck our economy..

Question? Want to have an intelligent conversation with someone who knows what they are talking about? Avoid climate change know-it-all armchair scientists who do not believe there are two sides to every story.

To date I have another 100 comments from the deluded, so I am going to have plenty of material to work with.

Roger Marks, Drouin