The $51,000-a-year Bellevue Hill school is yet to officially respond to parents’ concerns. But headmaster Ian Lambert is a busy man.
In August, he accompanied the Scots College Pipes and Drums to Scotland, where they competed in Perth and performed on the lawns of Balmoral Castle. Lambert, bandmaster Paul Hughes and some of the students had the privilege of being introduced to King Charles, the headmaster wrote in this week’s school newsletter.
Scots College headmaster Ian Lambert meeting King Charles in August.Credit: Facebook
Should the king – who spent time at Geelong Grammar as a teenager – decide to send one of his young heirs to an Australian school for a spell, they would no doubt feel at home at the Scots castle library (with extra baggage allowance for BYO books).
Live Nation coming to a stadium near you?
Word is that Ticketmaster, owned by the global behemoth Live Nation, is frontrunner to take over ticketing services for Venues NSW’s Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong stadiums.
The Australian-owned Ticketek has had the main ticketing contract for five venues for more than 40 years. In March, Venues NSW invited Ticketmaster, Ticketek and AXS Australia Group, linked to Frontier Touring, to tender for all its venues including three venues managed by Ticketmaster. The winning bidder is expected to be named in the next week or two.
CBD has cast an eye over the tender for public ticketing services for sports events and concerts, and it’s mostly concerned with price, presumably to extract the best value for NSW taxpayers.
But Live Nation and its booking arm Ticketmaster are not exactly popular in the entertainment world, with rising apprehension around their dominance of the global live music scene.
Live Nation denies it wields monopoly power, but it has fingers in ticketing, venues, festival promotion, artist management and merchandising.
Last year Australian musicians called for a high-level probe into the corporate players in the live music industry, in a bid to stamp out “anti-competitive” practices they say are leaving them struggling to make a living. That same year the US Justice department announced an anti-trust investigation into Live Nation.
Midnight Oil frontman and former Labor minister Peter Garrett led criticism of Live Nation’s ticketing fee structure during a 2024 ABC Four Corners investigation into the ticket fee add-ons. Artists, he said then, were not benefiting from a raft of fees added to concert prices.
In the UK, Live Nation – as promoter – came under scrutiny for its use of dynamic pricing for the ticketing of reunion concerts of the warring Manchurian brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher. This involved adjusting ticket prices based on concert-goer demand, and caused a fan backlash.
Robert Smith, the frontman for the band The Cure, said he was “sickened” when in 2023 fans revealed some add-on fees and charges levied by Ticketmaster in the US were greater than the price of the ticket itself. Smith convinced the ticketing giant to issue small reimbursements.
Venues NSW confirmed “multiple major national and international ticketing companies submitted a tender in response to how their services could enhance our customers’ experiences, meet the needs of our sport and entertainment partners, and provide best-in class service at our events”.
“Venues NSW remains in discussion with multiple parties and more information will be available once the process is complete.”
A spokesperson for Ticketek said late Sunday night: “As you would appreciate, any tender process is subject to confidentiality obligations so we make ‘no comment’ regarding any Venues NSW tender process.
“Ticketek Entertainment Group is owned by a consortium led by Silver Lake partners private equity, and including Australian Super, Mercury Capital (a local Australian investor), and management.
“Ticketek Entertainment Group leases Qudos Bank Arena from the NSW Government. Ticketek Entertainment Group also plays a pivotal role in promoting and producing live events across music, concerts, sport, family entertainment, exhibitions, theatre and more.
“TEG makes a significant contribution to the health and diversity of live experiences in NSW and Australia and has a track record of supporting community causes, including staging the Fire Fight Australia Benefit Concert at Accor stadium in 2020 which raised more than $10 million for fire affected communities.”
Ticketmaster has been approached for comment.
Rumour mill in overdrive at Police HQ
It’s been a busy month on the law and order front in NSW: drive-by shootings, anti-immigration rallies, a fight between NSW Police and the AFP, and claims of Iranian interference in an anti-semitic attack on a childcare centre. And yet, NSW still doesn’t have a permanent police commissioner.
The delay is baffling many in the senior ranks, and the rumour mill – always in overdrive at Police HQ – is going into meltdown. The strongest rumour is that the three deputy commissioner applicants – Peter Thurtell, Paul Pisanos and Mal Lanyon (on secondment to the Reconstruction Authority) – have made the final round of interviews.
But theories abound about why the decision is taking so long. Outgoing commissioner Karen Webb left the police executive office in early June, even though her last day isn’t officially until September 30 (she is now working on a project for Domestic Violence minister Jodie Harrison on full commissioner pay).
Usually, a new boss is appointed well before their predecessor departs. Webb was announced in November for a February start. The AFP’s new boss, Krissy Barrett, was appointed in early August but won’t begin until October. So the announcement has been anticipated for weeks.
Some thought Premier Chris Minns would wait until after budget estimates. Some, that he’d do it straight after the Kiama byelection. One theory is that he’ll wait until the end of the month so that the new commissioner can step straight into the job. But another is that he is genuinely struggling with the decision and doesn’t have a standout candidate.
Minns told reporters on Sunday that he wants to get it right. “Part of the decision is experience, part of it is credentials, but it’s also the individual candidate’s plan or vision for the New South Wales police force for, say, the next five or 10 years,” he said, adding that he thought the force was in safe hands with the deputies in charge.
For the sake of the stability of the police force and for the nerves of those running it, here’s hoping Minns will decide soon.
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