Melbournians, like Wellingtonians, are a breed with their heads jammed permanently up their own arses, but if there’s one thing they’re especially insufferably smug about it’s their bloody ‘cafe culture’. I mean, this is a city which had a NIMBY ‘protest’ group whose acronym was ‘CAFE’ (Citizens Against Freeway Extensions). It’s all a bit too much fuss over some coffee and a fancy toastie.
Melbournians are also addicted to electing Labor governments. So, let’s see how they go when their precious Labor government so screws things up that their even more precious cafes shut down in protest.
Thousands of Victorian restaurants are threatening to close their doors for a day to protest the Allan government’s gas reforms, in strike action which would create chaos across the state and bleed up to $6m in taxes from the Victorian economy.
Australian Restaurant and Café Association (ARCA) chief executive Wes Lambert said the single-day shutdown would ensure the voices of those working in the sector – worth $60m a day – were heard.
A date for the mass shutdown has not yet been set, but it could occur anytime before the November 2026 election if hospitality organisations did not believe the government was willing to change its plans to make all new restaurants, cafes and bars fully electric, he said.
At issue is the Labor government’s demented Climate Cultism and its plans to ban gas in the state. Yes, once again, yesterday’s far-right conspiracy is today’s leftist reality. While backlash has forced the government to back down – or, as is always the way with the left, bide its time – on completely banning gas, all new commercial buildings will be banned from gas fittings, from the end of next year. The government is also banning replacing existing gas fittings.
Such a policy could only come from politicians who, as their class will, have never worked a day outside politics in their adult lives.
Nik Pouloupatis, who owns South Yarra restaurant Astoria Bar Ke Grill, said […] using electric equipment rather than gas in professional kitchens would be difficult given the traditional methods of cooking used by many chefs.
“We’ve been cooking with gas for so long that a lot of cuisines are heavily reliant on that, and probably won’t achieve the same flavours cooking over induction,” he said.
Not to mention the exorbitant cost of changing over. Such high added costs will be a death blow to an industry already struggling on tight margins to overcome the lunatic damage inflicted by the same Labor during Covid.
A leading hospitality figure told me this policy will destroy the livelihoods of thousands of small businesses, with induction cooking unaffordable except for a select few with no viable alternatives outlined by the policy.
He points out 99 per cent of the Melbourne food industry including caterers, hotels and even hospitals run on natural gas.
They use gas for woks, large format gas cooktops and gas fired barbecues.
So, without any consultation, an incompetent state government that likes to sell Melbourne as a major events destination that tourists flock to spend money eating and drinking, in what is often called the best food destination in Australia, is telling us gas is bad, electricity is good and we know better than you.
More to the point:
A state flush with natural gas turning its back on a cheap reliable power source for no good reason.
Victoria is like a starving man sitting atop a pile of fresh produce and refusing to eat because he’s vegan.
