Former Adelaide Festival director warns high liquor licence fees will hurt city’s renewed vibrancy

Soaring liquor licence fees will undermine the city’s renewed vibrancy and price some artistic events “out of existence”, warns the Former Adelaide Festival director.

• Adelaide nightclubs protest liquor licence hikes
• Raft of SA fees, charges and fines to rise
• Looking back at the best Fringe bars

Former Adelaide Festival director David Sefton has warned that a “cash grab” which is set to send liquor licence fees soaring will undermine the city’s renewed vibrancy and price some artistic events “out of existence”.

Mr Sefton, now involved in events including the experimental music festival Unsound, on Wednesday met with late night and artistic sector leaders who form a core group that’s set to campaign against the State Government changes.

Former Adelaide Festival director David Sefton.

Mr Sefton said the new liquor licencing charges, which are set to take effect in November, threatened to unwind SA’s reputation as a festival and events state. “This is a city known for its cultural life,” Mr Sefton said.

“SA is known as the Festival State. What we should be doing is nurturing and supporting it, not penalising it.

“It feels just counterintuitive, counter productive and actively destructive to price it out of existence.”

He said huge price increases for venues would have impacts throughout the “food chain” of the artistic industry, which he called “one of the only serious growth areas in the state and something we all turn to with pride”.

Sugar nightclub is facing a near six-fold increase in annual fees to $15,000, a rise it says could force closure, and bar Bank Street Social is considering price increases or cutbacks in hours to cover a licence jump from $1000 to $6000.

The Government says venue owners will be assisted through the change and some could save money by moving to new licence categories.