The Office of Liquor, Gaming & Racing (OLGR) is taking action against Snowtunes festival, which had its inaugural event at Jindabyne in the Snowy Mountains last weekend, after detecting multiple serious breaches during the festival.
Snowtunes was billed as a seven-hour, all-ages and family-friendly event, with a lineup featuring some of Australia’s hottest young acts, including electronic duo Hermitude and homegrown rappers Allday and Tkay Maidza.
But OLGR Director of Compliance & Enforcement Anthony Keon said multiple serious safety and security breaches were detected during the event, including an intoxicated 13-year-old girl found dazed and unaware in the female toilets.
“OLGR inspectors and Police at the festival found controls and security supervision to be seriously lacking and insufficient for the 3,600 patrons in attendance. This, coupled with the risky nature of the event, created a potentially unsafe environment particularly for minors,” Mr Keon said.
“As well as the extremely serious issue of a 13-year-old girl being found intoxicated and disoriented in a public toilet, a 21-year-old man was detected supplying alcohol to two 16- year-old boys.”
“Six minors aged 13-15 were also found unaccompanied and without appropriate adult supervision, contrary to licence conditions for the event. An unaccompanied 14-year-old girl was unable to be located by her adult minder for one-and-a-half hours. The juvenile was only reunited after all patrons had left the event after 12.30am.”
“A 13-year-old girl [was] found intoxicated and disoriented in a public toilet”Indeed, the rundown of issues detected at Snowtunes festival, as detailed in an OLGR press release, reads like a checklist for how not to run a festival, right down to the attire worn by festival guards – dark blue jackets, making them hard to identify for punters.
A DJ was reportedly observed yelling, “[Fuck] the police sniffer dogs. People just want to get high and have fun”, during the all-ages event. Meanwhile, an 18-year-old woman was observed drinking from a hip flask and subsequently vomiting in front of inspectors.
An intoxicated man was also seen urinating “in full view of hundreds of people next to the mosh pit”. Event staff at the scene allegedly took no action and police subsequently intervened and arrested the punter.
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Even more seriously, intoxicated revellers were observed in the mosh pit, with organisers only ordering security sweeps of the mosh pit from 10pm. There was also reportedly no promotion of water and no obvious water stations, despite a license stipulation.
Mr Keon added that “the operators of Snowtunes failed to adequately assess the risks of conducting such a large event and failed to ensure adequate planning and deployment of resources to maintain proper oversight of patrons”.
“Instead of properly monitoring the crowd for intoxication and safety issues security staff were deployed to the event perimeter to stop people jumping the fence without paying for tickets.”
“By doing this they dropped the ball on what was going on in the general crowd and mosh pit areas and serious intoxication issues arose as a result.” The OLGR will be pursuing regulatory action against the festival’s organisers, Snowtunes Pty Ltd.
Tone Deaf reached out to Snowtunes representatives for comment but they did not respond in time for publication.
