By Cara Waters
Lord mayoral candidate Arron Wood is pledging to bring back an expanded version of the Melbourne Money program if elected.
Wood will provide $5 million to restart the program that ran after the pandemic lockdowns, offering a 20 per cent rebate on the cost of food and drinks at venues in the City of Melbourne. He will also expand it to include live music venues.
Lord mayoral candidate Arron Wood has promised to revive the Melbourne Money scheme.Credit: Jason South
This will include pubs, bars and nightclubs for total spends between $50 and $500.
“We know that a lot of our hospitality venues are still doing it really tough,” Wood said. “City of Melbourne’s own data identifies that nearly 2000 businesses have been lost over the recent years, and a lot of those losses are actually in the hospitality sector.”
Wood pointed to data from the City of Melbourne’s Census of Land Use and Employment that shows 1725 businesses closed from 2019 to 2022. However, other council data shows the number of registered businesses in the area increased by 2986 from 2020 to 2023.
Wood said adding live music venues to the Melbourne Money scheme was about getting confidence back into the sector.
“The boost of backing the industry is almost equal, if not more important, than the value of the funding itself,” he said.
Live music events at stadiums including the MCG, Rod Laver Arena and AAMI Park, as well as events at Sidney Myer Music Bowl and major theatres, will not be included in Wood’s Melbourne Money program.
“The big stadium shows and the larger venues by and a large have a business model which is relatively robust,” he said, naming acts like Taylor Swift and The Weeknd.
But it was a tough market for smaller venues, he said.
“The live music performers have said this could be just a real confidence boost for them knowing that their shows will sell out,” Wood said.
The Melbourne Money scheme was conceived to encourage people to return to the city after COVID-19 lockdowns. More than 850,000 claims were made across three tranches between June 2021 and April 2022, which offered a 30 per cent discount on midweek meals.
The City of Melbourne calculated Melbourne Money brought $100 million into the city’s economy. The council paid out about $20 million to consumers, partially funded by the state government.
“We shouldn’t keep blaming COVID for all of the ills, but there’s definitely been a particularly long tail of COVID recovery in the live music industry, and that, I think, warrants this additional boost of support,” Wood said.
Janette Pitruzzello, aka DJ JNETT, said an extension of Melbourne Money was a start for the music sector.
“We have a lot of incredible talent here struggling to survive,” she said. “From a performer’s perspective, it is one thing that we create this incentive for venues, but my primary concern is artists – we need way, way more support.”
Wood was previously deputy lord mayor to Robert Doyle, then acting lord mayor when Doyle resigned from the top job in 2018 following a sexual harassment scandal. Wood ran for mayor in 2020 but was defeated by Sally Capp, who resigned in June.
Wood is running against current Lord Mayor Nick Reece, Roxane Ingleton, Phil Reed, Anthony Koutoufides, Gary Morgan, Mariam Riza, Eylem Kim, Anthony van der Craats and Greg Bisinella.
Ballot packs for council elections across Victoria are being mailed this week and need to be completed and posted by Friday, October 25.
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