Fees for festival on table

TOURISM Industry Council Tasmania chief executive officer Luke Martin said the community needed to be “mature about an entry fee” to Taste of Tasmania.

He said Hobart City Council’s decision to offload the festival was a welcome one and had been a long time coming.

“Tasmanians have shown with the Dark Mofo Winter Feast that if the event is quality they are willing to pay a small entry fee to make it viable,” Mr Martin said.

“The council deserves every credit for growing the Taste over three decades, but the event has clearly outgrown it.”

Last year’s eight-day festival, which is usually the highlight of the Christmas-New Year season, was cancelled following the coronavirus crisis.

Mr Martin said he was hopeful a not-for-profit model could be established with a board overseen by stallholders, business heads and community representatives.

“They may contract a private event organiser or festival director to put the event on, but surely any profits generated from the Taste should go to the stallholders, not event organisers.”

Hobart City Council Alderman Marti Zucco, who voted against last night’s council recommendation to divest of the festival disagreed that a reinvented event should include a cover charge. Ald Zucco, who was involved as a stallholder in the second Taste of Tasmania, said he was frustrated that Hobart City Council had paid a consultant $50,000 eight years ago to come up with a recommendation but the local authority ignored the advice.

“I’ve pushed and pushed for years and years for it to go for an authority that would be at arm’s length from the council. We could have done this 20 years ago.”

He said the event should be run between the council, state government and a consortium of industry professionals with the council still contributing about $500,000 to $600,000.

“As soon as you take it away from politics, the sponsorship component returns too,” he said.

Taste founder, former alderman John Freeman, said the festival needed to get back to its roots.

“It’s meant to be a food and wine festival and the problem is that it’s no longer that. They wanted to be all sorts of things to all sorts of people adding things like a kids playground and music which all costs money.”

He was against a cover charge.

Festivale Chairman David Dunn said taking over the running of Taste of Tasmania wasn’t something they had considered.