Labor sees votes in suburban art, late-night dining and free early buses

For all the attention on how Brisbane will host the 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, there are many who believe the city needs a night-time economy first.

Crowds going out in Fortitude Valley.Credit: Paul Harris

“Going into 2032, it is essential for Brisbane to become a 24-hour city,” said QMusic chief executive officer Kris Stewart.

“I don’t think we should be able to invite people to Brisbane in 2032 and ask them to be in bed by 6pm.”

It’s not an uncommon view in Brisbane, not only to support tourism and local businesses, but also to cater to the gig workers who keep the economy running and have their own needs after-hours.

“How we live and work now isn’t as structured as it once was,” Stewart said.

“People are looking for more options, but it’s hard [for businesses to be] trying something for the first time and there’s risk involved for venues and artists.”

His comments came as Labor’s lord mayoral candidate, Tracey Price, unveiled the party’s arts and nightlife policy, which she hoped would find a receptive audience in Brisbane.

Price said Brisbane should no longer be seen as a “sleepy city”.

“We’ve got people who go out to watch a show, and would like to go out and have something to eat or have a drink afterwards and their options are very limited,” she said.

“We’ve also got shift workers who come home from a late night and they want to be able to go out with their friends or grab a meal and they just can’t do it, so we’re trying to make sure that we bring our nightlife in our city and our suburbs to life.”

Brisbane lord mayoral candidate Tracey Price with her son.

Price said there were also too many quiet periods, and a need to better schedule community events and festivals throughout the year.

“I’ve got a son studying arts and it is a real concern for me that he’s not going to be able to sustain a regular income because the work is so stagnant... it’s really important for our young people to be able to have an industry where they can feel secure in,” she said.

The Greens’ mayoral candidate, Jonathan Sriranganathan, said Brisbane needed more council funding for live music and performing arts.

“As a musician and events organiser myself, I’ve seen how both the major parties have suffocated the arts over many years with excessively harsh and inflexible regulations,” he said.

Revellers at The Tivoli in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley.Credit: Adam Ferguson

“If a developer wants to start jackhammering in the suburbs at 6.30am on a Saturday, apparently that’s fine, but meanwhile the Brisbane Jazz Club has to wrap up live music by 10pm on a Saturday night.”

The incumbent LNP administration backed its record in City Hall, and ongoing efforts to balance competing priorities and the budget. The responsible councillor, Vicki Howard, suggested the Labor announcement was another example of the opposition party’s political allegiance with the Greens.

“It’s little wonder that Labor has surrendered the real alternative agenda to the radical Greens and [is] planning a dodgy vote-preferencing and power-sharing deal with their self-declared anarchist leader when all they can come up with is copycat policy like this,” said Howard, the civic cabinet chair for community, arts and night-time economy.

“It’s gross hypocrisy for the Labor-Green coalition of chaos to even be talking about the nighttime economy when they opposed Brisbane’s most popular new precinct, Howard Smith Wharves, as well as our next major new destination, Queen’s Wharf.”

Standing on Boundary Street in West End, the local Labor candidate, Bec Mac, sought to highlight the proliferation of creative businesses, such as fashion designer Nelson Molloy’s factory, ceramics studio Vacant Assembly, Milani Gallery, architects Vokes and Peters, and the Art Shed.

“This whole industry area has been recreated through art and culture and activation, so we can do this through the city and strip shops that need revitalising,” Mac said.

Milani Gallery director Josh Milani said investment in sport still dwarfed investment in the arts.

“They can talk about spending billions on tearing down the Gabba [stadium] and rebuilding it but if you tried to spend that much money on a museum, it just would never happen,” Milani said.

“The arts, including film, theatre and visual arts, actually is one of the main employers in the economy and we have incredible artists here in Brisbane.

“I think our artists are ready [for the Olympics] but I don’t think we have the infrastructure to really make them shine.”

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