Kieran Spillane: Live Nation Festivals Director says Rhythm and Vines team are prepared for New Years

Organisers of Gisborne's Rhythm and Vines festival are prepared for every eventuality.

Thousands have descended on Waiohika Estate vineyard for the three-day music and camping festival - running since 2003.

Festival-goers remain in high spirits - despite heavy rain last night and light rain forecast today.

Live Nation Festivals Director Kieran Spillane told Andrew Dickens the team is well prepared for the time, between now and New Year's Day.

He says they have 350 security guards, Police patrols, 30 paramedics, and drug and alcohol breath testing.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
Violence in Orkan, CYBD. It's always been a problem, but
it's getting worse. Anti social and disruptive behavior is up.
It was highlighted by last weekend's brawl on K Road
leading to four arrests. They reckoned two hundred to three
hundred people on the street, all either fighting or egging
them on. At the same time, we've got homelessness miss
in the CBD reaching a crisis point with rough sleeping

(00:38):
numbers doubling on last year. So joining us now is
the co founder of k Roague Community Safety and it's
Caramerichie good What is here, Karen good morning. When you
set up k Rogue Community Safety, What were the main
problems you wanted to address?

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Well, that was about twenty years ago that we set
that up, and it was pretty much a similar thing
to what's happening today, but not as intense, and that
back then it was the a community that were being targeted,

(01:16):
so and there was a lot of spots of different
fights and things happening, and it was it was pretty discussing,
you know, back then as well. I think this is
absolutely appalling that we are still facing something like this
today where the fights are just taking place in the
streets and public areas, you know, for shopkeepers, for everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
So what did you start calling for twenty years ago?
Did it ever happen? And what would you call for now?

Speaker 3 (01:48):
More police in the street. And it's exactly what we did.
We've got more police in the street to monitor what's
happening and what's going on. And it did work very
very well. It took a while, you know, but it
still worked and people got to know that they couldn't
get away with what was happening then. And I think

(02:12):
that might be a good thing to happen now. Is
more police on the beat up there?

Speaker 2 (02:17):
There are more police on the beat according to the government,
but they are having troubles actually recruiting even more police numbers.
Do we even have the number of police that could
actually make our CBD safe?

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Yes, that doesn't surprise me. It's I'm sure that they
do need more police. It's an awful time actually that
we live in that we have to put up with
this kind of carry on if we're out socializing or
businesses and streets have to put up with this, the homelessness,

(02:49):
all of that. It's a lot of drug interested people
out there. I'm sorry, but that's how I feel.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
How big a problem therefore, are the rough sleepers. I
know that the government has said it's time to move
them on, which is moving them out of the CBD
and to other places I guess where they could create
some problems. Potacker has been talking about this as well,
but he has no answers as well, So well, how
do you feel about those orders to move rough sleepers on?

(03:16):
And is that the right thing to be doing?

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Well? That is a that is a hard question because it's,
you know, they just come back again. It's a hard
question of where do you put them. But I am
a strong believer that they should not be in the
areas where organizations and companies are trying to you know,

(03:43):
make money or do their job or whatever. It does
make it very difficult because people just don't want to
be harassed like that when they go into places like
ky Road.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
Last week last week I spoke to Wayne Brown about
this and I said, what about the rough sleepers and
the antisocial behavior in our CBD? And he said that
was actually the government's problem. Do you believe that's the
case or should the council be helping out more.

Speaker 3 (04:06):
I think the council should be helped out more. I
really do. As I said, we had the committee and
we did get that trend up. We had a lot
of meetings over that. Just Sindra Adern was very supportive
and used to come to our meetings. She was very
supportive of the K Road Safety and I would like

(04:31):
to see something like that formed again so that there
is a voice to be able to speak to these people,
not not depends on the on the street because you
can't use are not going to be able to speak
to them, but to speak to some of the people
higher up in government or whatever council. It's something's got

(04:53):
to be done.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
It just has to be Karen Richie, I thank you
so much for your time and if it's over the
last twenty years, k characters from the K Road Community
Safety Organization.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
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