PINT Club barred from holding monthly blues bash in May after noise complaints upheld
The PINT Club will be banned from holding it’s upcoming First Sunday Blues concert in May — even if coronavirus restrictions are lifted by then — after the Liquor Commission upheld a string of noise complaints from nearby residents.
Northern Territory
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THE PINT Club will be barred from holding it’s upcoming First Sunday Blues concert in May — even if coronavirus restrictions are lifted by then — after the Liquor Commission upheld a string of noise complaints from nearby residents.
The club, on the boundary of the Marrara Cricket Ground, is one of Darwin’s oldest licenced clubs and the commission heard long-term neighbours “were neither annoyed nor disturbed by the activities of the PINT Club” for many years.
However, in 2017, the club built a “substantial outdoor sound stage in its beer garden, which it used to present a string of rock, blues, pop, folk and country music concerts”.
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“For reasons that have not been explained to the commission, the Club built the stage facing directly towards Sunningdale Ct,” the commission’s decision reads.
“The resulting noise caused disturbance and annoyance to at least ten residents of the Northlakes Estate, who complained to the Director-General of Licensing.”
The complaint was upheld in 2018 and the club ordered to develop a noise complaint policy but the same year another 29 concerts held at the club attracted a total of 50 further complaints.
As a result, a number of those complaints were referred on to the Liquor Commission along with a raft of further complaints about events in 2019.
In upholding the noise complaints, the commission ruled that while the concerts had not breached the club’s licence conditions, they had “caused annoyance and disturbance” to nearby residents.
“One particular aspect of this ground of complaint that should be specifically noted is the significant annoyance and disturbance caused by the use of offensive language, both in song lyrics and comments made by performers on stage,” the decision reads.
“In addition, the commission was concerned by unchallenged evidence that on occasion performers on stage had made taunting remarks about the complainants and their complaints.
“The commission infers that the performers concerned had been informed by the licensee of the noise complaints in a manner apt to provoke animosity against the complainants by those performers, who in turn spoke to patrons in a manner apt to provoke animosity towards the complainants by patrons.”
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The commission ruled the club could continue holding its monthly concerts after the scrapped May event as long as the volume didn’t exceed 85 decibels and its owners installed a “noise limiting device” on the sound system.
The PINT Club has also made plans to construct a new sound stage facing the other way.
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