Australia sells itself as ‘a reef, a rock and a harbour’. Melbourne wants to be its new face

Retaining key existing events without becoming overdependent on them, and working out how to use the spaces they occupy for the remainder of the year, will pose both a challenge and an opportunity for Melbourne in the years ahead.

John Harnden, chief executive of the state government-owned Melbourne Park, said continuing to expand the city’s events remit – and tap into new, diverse audiences – was essential.

To demonstrate his point, on a tour through the precinct, Harnden stopped at John Cain Arena, where staff were preparing to host a bull-riding event the following day. Outside of an already expansive tennis, basketball and netball roster, he said the venue had hosted sporting events as diverse as ice hockey and Indian contact sport kabaddi, and everyone from The Wiggles to Kesha.

At Margaret Court Arena, Harnden pointed out the curtain that could be drawn across the back half of the stands to give the audience a more intimate live concert atmosphere. He said a smaller stage could also be rolled out to simulate what he called “band-room mode” – one of many ways the precinct is adapting to meet the needs of its expanded music offering.

At Flemington Racecourse, Victoria Racing Club (VRC) has been moving in a similar direction – increasingly using music and entertainment to activate its 127-hectare precinct year-round, diversify its income, and engage more young people in racing.

In 2023, it welcomed the Laneway Festival, which was forced to find a new home in Melbourne, as its previous site in Footscray was redeveloped.

VRC chief executive Kylie Rogers said it was incumbent upon all racing administrators on large parcels of land to ensure they opened up their spaces to the community. Flemington Racecourse is Crown land, leased by the state government to the VRC.

“If we’re going to drive more fandom and more understanding of racing and bring different audiences in, how do I have a conversation with the 50,000 18-to-35-year-olds who go to the Laneway Festival? How do we introduce them into racing?” Rogers said.

“Let’s give them a discount pass or free entry into our next race day so they can get a taste of it, and they can learn about it.”

Looking at the big picture of arts events, Frontier Touring chief executive Dion Brant told The Age more investment needed to be made in permanent infrastructure throughout Melbourne to make sure it continued to attract a range of overseas artists, saying several venues were beginning to look “tired and old” compared to those interstate.

Live Nation Australia and New Zealand President Alex Klos said Melbourne is also now competing with other cities around the world. Pre-pandemic, he said Australia was generally considered a top-five international touring destination, but in recent years, emerging markets such as South America, the Middle East, Asia, India, and Eastern Europe had invested heavily in infrastructure, giving artists more choice, often closer to home.

“We can’t just assume that Australia is still going to be number five or even top five destinations [artists] will tour,” Klos said.

“The artist will make a decision on where they can get the best return in the shortest possible timeframe. The challenge for us is – how do we keep Australia really competitive and relevant in that global conversation?”

VTIC’s Lisa Patroni said visitors needed to be able to get here first, backing in the long-awaited Melbourne Airport rail link as a priority project. Alluding to Melbourne Airport’s incoming third runway, Patroni said infrastructure should match aviation capacity to help people travel from the airport to the city, and then into regional Victoria.

“If we want Melbourne to claim a larger share of the Australian tourism story, we need a 10-year vision for the Victorian visitor economy that positions tourism at the centre of our economic future,” Patroni said.

A state government spokesperson said its investments supported more than 322,000 jobs and generated almost $50 billion annually in tourism spending across the state.

“We’ve invested over $2.4 billion in community sport infrastructure since 2014, giving Victorians world-class facilities to play, train and compete,” the spokesperson said.

“With nearly 800,000 volunteers and more than 12,000 community clubs, Labor backs sport in every corner of the state, not just the big events.”

According to University of Melbourne pro vice-chancellor Tiriki Onus, however, major events are only one piece of the puzzle. In his eyes, the most important thing the government can do to preserve the city’s cultural identity is to invest more in the local industries that have built and sustained its reputation as a place where people want to perform or play.

In particular, Onus, a Melbourne Assembly panellist, said there needed to be more support for “mid-tier” projects – somewhere between the local pub gig or junior footy game, and the major stadium event – because that was where the innovations that would take us into the future lived.

”The arts and performance and indeed sport have been used as these great moments of identity-making that’s happened throughout generations … It’s all well and good to go to that one show or to go that one football event, but it’s the way we keep engaging and keep coming back together that means that our arts organisations, our festivals, our artists survive and flourish,” he said.

“We also need to make it easier for us to move between the sporting field and the theatre, to normalise that type of engagement … because if there’s one thing that all these spaces have in common, it’s the beautiful way that they draw us all together … So how do we create more of those spaces that draw us in? How do we break down the elitist nature of these institutions and these spaces so they are accessible?”

As modern travellers reject mass-market tourism in favour of authentic experiences, Onus said the city had an opportunity to double down on its reputation as a cultural capital by embracing and investing in the stories and traditions that had shaped it.

While interest in Indigenous tourism experiences is booming globally, the Yorta Yorta and Dja Dja Wurrung academic and artist said Melbourne was failing to capitalise on its own rich First Nations history.

He said many locals, let alone visitors, remained unaware of the history behind some of the city’s most iconic places and festivals – such as Moomba Festival’s origins in an Indigenous protest performance, or the MCG, once a corroboree ground, “turned into a cricket ground because it was a huge, flat expanse that had been beaten flat by the dancing of literally millions of feet over thousands of generations”.

Onus said the stories of diaspora communities who had fundamentally shaped the face of the city were also often lost, and that the recent Indian Film Festival was a perfect example of the kind of event the government should be investing more in. By leaning deeper into the rich history of the city and its diverse cultures, he said the city’s international appeal would only grow.

“[In the past] you travelled overseas, you’d come back with a suitcase full of gifts for everyone because of all of this strange stuff that you couldn’t buy elsewhere. You go to another country now, and it’s the same shops, it’s the same spaces, everything is the same,” Onus said.

“Now people are coming here [because they] want an experience … They want to learn something about a place … So we need to help those stories get told. And perhaps if we listen to them a bit more ourselves … we’d feel a little less threatened by one another, and we’d all be a little bit more excited about who we might be together.”

Melbourne Assembly will be held from October 19 to October 21. More information is available on the Melbourne Assembly website.