Oliver Peterson: Australian correspondent on Australian Venue Co banning Australia Day celebrations in its venues

An Australian hospitality giant has banned Australia Day celebrations in its venues - sparking calls for a boycott.

Australian Venue Co, owner of over 200 pubs and bars across the nation, has directed managers and staff to shut down celebrations of the holiday in 2025.

Australian correspondent Oliver Peterson says this debate takes place every year - with no signs of change in sight.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And six, pur Perth Live present to Oli Peterson is
Weathers this afternoon, killed Olie.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Jack, you are trending right across Australia over the last
forty eight hours or so, am I Yeah, your interview
with the PM. Everybody's saying this is how we should
talk to prime ministers. Look at you go, Jack, Well.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
I can assure you that not everyone is saying that, Oly,
Not everyone is saying that. No, it's always a good
wealth and my line of works. Sometimes it's a good
idea to turn the notifications off, you know.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Yeah, I never read any of the comments on social
media about myself.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
What was the point? No, no, no, no, no, that's it. No,
that's news to me. Well, making it big in Australia, right,
we all have dreams. Hey, The National Energy Regulator wants
the ability to remotely switch off rooftop solar and given
how many homes have rooftop solar in Australia, this is massive, huge.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
So we we're talking now about four million homes in
Australia that have rooftop solar and it's really been a
big push, particularly over my side of the country in Way,
where we have an abundance of sunshine, and we've been
some of the earlier adopters of this technology. In fact,
they already have the ability to be able to turn
off for one of a better term, that power being

(01:11):
generated which can be sold back into the grid. So
that is what is being proposed here by AMIO, which
is the national Energy market operator, that they can just
all of a sudden pause, the fact that you can
send that energy from your rooftop solar back into the
grid for everybody else to use because they're just going
to have too much of it. It seems really odd,
you know, in theory, to be honest with Jack, because

(01:33):
we have an energy crisis in this country. We are
being told on the Eastern States at the moment to
prioritize this summer. You can't really put your washing machine
on at the same time as you want to cook
and perhaps watch the television and have your conditioning system on.
So this sort of stuff just blows your mind when
you think, hold on, you're all telling us to go
and get rooftop solar, try and give us some subsidies

(01:54):
for batteries, and if we want to sell it back
into the grid, you're telling us you don't have the
capacity to elect it. Something is massively flawed with any
system's infrastructure. Here Jack that while people are doing the
right thing, going down the path and putting rooftop solar
in their homes and try to generate their own power
and will sell it back to Australians, they're being told

(02:15):
they can't. It's just madness.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Just like it seems like a real failure of kind
of infrastructure planning or something, right, like, what is an alternative?
Could they basically need to have large capacity battery storage
or something like that?

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Right? Yes, yes, and there are some subsidies for those batteries,
but you know we're talking homes having to then go
and spend potentially another ten thousand dollars to put those
batteries into their homes. They don't have that. So they
can make a couple of bucks selling it back to
the energy regulator.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Why not?

Speaker 1 (02:42):
So to be totally clear, so that's for a battery
at home. But is there not like a larger scale
grid option, you know, like in New Zealand over recent years,
for example, they've been talking about having a lake that
essentially you use when you've got when you're generating heaps
of electricity, you can push the water up, use that
energy to push the water up pill and then let
it flow down until later on, so that you have

(03:04):
it as a battery and you can use it when
the sun isn't shining, for example, there's no spot like that.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
No, and that's what we need. We need that on
a large scale infrastructure, you know, project there's more people
have decided to put solar on. You'd think that you
could be able to store what is being generated there
to then share it around when you need it.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Interesting, Okay, So three colleges have been closed down for
issuing fake diplomas.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah, and we're talking here about seventeen thousand students. So
these are based in Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne and people
who might have qualifications in early childhood education, the disability support,
age care, community services and first date. It's long been
argued that a lot of these so called education colleges
have just been set up as a route to bring

(03:44):
in international students, to not only line the pockets of
the educators, but to also provide an opportunity for migrants
to move into Australia and not really get the qualifications
they thought they were going to get. But it could
be advertised at a price that they can get the
mid of the country. So these ghost colleges have been
shut down. The the whole sector is on notice. And
really this plays into the hands of the government which

(04:05):
is saying it will crack down on migration, and it
turns its attention towards international students and colleges because ultimately, Jack,
they don't vote, so that they're the easy solution, not
the structural problems that we have with migration at the moment.
Just get rid of the students because they're not going
to vote either way. So you know, the government looks
like they're doing something when they're not really.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah, yeah, fascinating. Now, a company that owns about two
hundred pubs and bars around Australia is it's not going
to be holding any Australia Day celebrations at any of
its venues.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
What yeah, well, this is you know, the annual debate
in Australia about whether or not we should celebrate on
the twenty sixth of January.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
I just you know what, I call it Invasion Day
eight correct, right, But I didn't really have it on
my bingo card for December one and two. You know,
I just thought let's get let's get Christmas out of
the way and return to the airwaves in the.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Middle of January and start. So I'm sure we move
the date or not? No, Australian venues co. And we're
talking here some of the most popular pubs and bars
in locations like Darling Harbor. You've got Cargo Bar, which
is one of the most famous bars in Sydney. Plenty
of pubs, as you said, right across the country, including
a dozen or so here in Perth. The Clermont Hotels
one that I go to, So you know, people are

(05:10):
saying I'll never go there again, you know. And the
irony here is, you know, they do call themselves Australian
venues Coe. They don't want to celebrate Australia Day. Look,
I think ultimately again it's the same issue.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
That pops up every year.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
Do we celebrate on the twenty sixth of January or not?
Now that this pub group's going early, it's reignited the debate.
Will anybody actually move the date? No, because no one
can find an alternative date. But we go round and
round in circles.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Hey, thanks for your time, Mollie, appreciate it as always
that is Oli Peterson six PR Perth Live Presenters.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drave.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
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