Noise complaints from neighbouring residents targeting nearby venues is hardly a new threat to Melbourne’s live music scene but inner-city entertainment venues could be slugged with tough new noise restrictions as part of a survey by Victorian State Government calling for bothered residents to air their grievances.
More than 50,000 people living near live music venues in Melbourne’s CBD, inner-north, west, and south-east have all been targeted by a new survey from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asking for feedback about how “bothered, disturbed or annoyed” they are about noise from venues, as a report from Fairfax reveals.
The EPA’s noise survey, which was also open to the general public over a month, asks for residents to input their home address before filling out a short questionnaire specifying their complaints with noise, the time of day it occurs, the impact it has on their home life, and the action they took.
The survey’s questions are delivered in one-sided phrasing, such as: “how much/how often are you are bothered, disturbed or annoyed by music noise from public entertainment venues (such as pubs, clubs or outdoor venues)?”
“The survey will help us assess whether the community is satisfied with the current noise laws,” EPA representative Dan Keely tells The Age. “The only people who are going to respond are those who have an issue… It could very well be used for evil.”
Over 2,100 noise complaints were received by the EPA in 2013, on top of those that are regularly handled by local councils and police, and Keely says the feedback from the 2014 survey would be used to compare noise levels at various locations around Melbourne – including popular live music hubs like Fitzroy, Northcote, and South Yarra – to gauge noise pollution regulations.
”We want to find out if people are disturbed or annoyed by noise from entertainment venues and commercial or industrial premises in Melbourne,” says Keely. ”However, more than a simple ‘annoyed or not annoyed’ answer, we want to know how loud noise is when it becomes unreasonable.”
But St Kilda Live Music Community’s Michelle Harrington says the survey is “a really imbalanced process” that does not account for the views of live music supporters. “The only people who are going to respond are those who have an issue,” she says. “You might have one or two people who complain but there’s actually no process for people who register support. It could very well be used for evil.”
A screen-grab of the EPA’s 2014 Noise Survey
Noise complaint issues have already affected a wide array of live music venues in recent years, forcing many into fronting for costly soundproofing in the process, a long list that includes St Kilda’s Pure Pop Records, and Prince Public Bar, Brunswick’s B.East, Collingwood’s Bendigo Hotel, and many more.
Earlier this year, the Victorian State Government seemed to at last acknowledge the issues faced by live venues, with plans to protect inner-CBD venues through the introduction of the ‘Agent of Change’ policy – which places the onus on residents new to an area to front for expensive soundproofing rather than the current conditions which make it the responsibility of a venue.
But despite a promise from Planning Minister Matthew Guy back in mid-January to implement the proverbial holy grail of live music reforms in “six or seven weeks”, as yet, nothing has emerged, even after pressure from key Melbourne hotspots like Ding Dong Lounge and Cherry Bar in AC/DC Lane’s over encroaching residential development.
Yesterday, the latter bar hosted its iconic CherryRock one-day event, set to be the “last ever” owing to the construction of a new apartment complex overlooking the AC/DC Lane venue. “If we do another [CherryRock] it’ll have to be radically different,” said co-owner James Young in April. “So the reality is there’s no way we’ll be able to repeat what we’ve done for the last 8 years ever again, and we’re not sure what the ‘go forward’ model will be.”
