Wednesday, 4 March 2026

 Tim BULL (Gippsland East) (19:04): (1561) My adjournment tonight is to the Minister for Casino, Gaming and Liquor Regulation in the other place. I ask the minister to apply some common sense. The action I am seeking is for some common sense to be applied to the liquor licence conditions for the Buchan Rodeo. This is an event that has been running for around 60 years. It is on every Easter. It is a fantastic family day out. Anyone who has been there will acknowledge that.

John Pesutto interjected.

Tim BULL: It has never had any major dramas, member for Hawthorn, whatsoever. Yet the rules keep changing as to the crowd control requirements, and they get tougher and tougher every year. Last year the committee was told to hire 11 crowd controllers. I was there, and it was total overkill. They were just tripping over themselves. It was ridiculous. That heavy security presence kills off the family-friendly atmosphere that the day is renowned for. This year is worse. Liquor Control Victoria has used a formula and told the committee it needs 26 guards. After pushing back it has been negotiated down to 16, but it is still absolutely ridiculous. It is a volunteer committee, they cannot afford it and it is simply unnecessary. I will tell you why this is ridiculous. Just down the road at the Canni Creek races ‍– I happened to be there again a fortnight ago; it is a matter of kilometres down the road – they had over 1600 people there. There were hundreds of kids present, like at the rodeo. They were serving alcohol, like at the rodeo – all done very responsibly. How many crowd controllers were required there? Two. They never had any issues – same area, same sort of crowd, alcohol served, family-friendly for kids.

Community events are already doing it tough. The cost of living has pushed attendances down at a lot of these events, but costs keep going up. Last year it cost the Buchan Rodeo committee about $100,000 to put it on. They were only able to return $6000 to the community charities. It is like the government wants these volunteer committees just to give up. They cannot handle the cost of having that many crowd controllers. They do not need that many crowd controllers. Minister, change the formula, fix this broken system and make sure we get some common sense applied so that the rodeo can continue for many years to come, because with this sort of overreaction and overbureaucratic response they are going to push it into oblivion. We need to look after these community events. Please, Minister, apply some common sense.