Perth’s problem: why ENTECH won’t be back

After 14 years serving WA’s production industry, Australia’s leading touring trade event has pulled Perth from its national roadshow. The immediate trigger was a compliance crisis at VenuesWest. The deeper story is about a state that keeps pricing itself out of the events it needs.

The trucks left Perth on Tuesday 2^nd June after the gig at Perth HPC. Four semitrailers, and with that a decision that had been building for years. ENTECH, 33 years old, with 105 roadshow dates executed on-time between the west and New Zealand, the event that brings professional AV, lighting, staging and production technology to the cities where the work happens, staged its last Perth show. For now.

The 2026 Perth edition was, by any measure, the largest ENTECH has ever run with record exhibitor numbers and attendance. The production community turned out in force. When the trucks pointed east, the organiser Kate McKenzie confirmed: they won’t be coming back.

The reasons are layered. A last-minute compliance ambush by VenuesWest at Perth High Performance Centre provided the final impetus. But McKenzie is clear that VenuesWest is a symptom of a broader problem, a Western Australian operating environment for events that has become, in her words, the most expensive, most bureaucratic, and least supported on the national circuit.

“Perth has been part of ENTECH for 14 years. The decision not to return was not made lightly. But we cannot keep subsidising a market that its own government won’t support,” said ENTECH’s Kate McKenzie.

The economics of touring to Perth

Running a touring trade show to Perth is not like running one to Melbourne or Sydney. The tyranny of distance is real and measurable. Four semitrailers of production equipment travel six days total return from the eastern seaboard. Crew flights and accommodation run exponentially higher. Freight and logistics costs have also risen sharply in recent years, well ahead of general inflation. Last minute impositions due to the fuel shortage iced the cake.

McKenzie says Perth venue costs have been escalating faster than any other city on the tour for several years. Perth HPC, managed by VenuesWest, a Western Australian Government statutory authority controlling 14 venues across the state, charged what she describes as the most expensive venue package on the entire national and New Zealand circuit.

That package included excessive staffing that organisers say was imposed at the last minute and without agreement and disproportionate to the event: two first aid officers for a 500-person professional trade audience; four security personnel for two entry doors; six ushers for a trade-only event that required none and a car park attendant for public car parks already managed by existing infrastructure. ENTECH has formally contested these costs and has not yet paid the outstanding $29,000 balance on the event cost estimate.

Which itself is unusual as every other venue collects full payment in advance.

Against that cost base, the event is free to attend for registered industry professionals – there is no ticket revenue. The model depends entirely on exhibitor fees and sponsorship. When venue costs absorb a disproportionate share of margin, the maths eventually stops working.

“We have run 105 roadshow dates. Perth HPC was the most expensive venue we have ever worked in. And the response to our concerns, at every level, was effectively: take it or leave it,” said Kate McKenzie.

What government support looks like, and doesn’t

ENTECH is not a consumer event. It doesn’t generate the economic footprint of a major concert or sporting fixture. It doesn’t attract interstate visitors in large numbers or fill hotels. What it does is quietly sustain the professional infrastructure that makes those larger events possible.

The AV technicians, lighting designers, staging crews, riggers, production managers and venue technical staff who attend ENTECH are the people who put Coldplay on stage at Optus Stadium. They keep corporate events, theatre seasons, festivals and broadcast productions running. ENTECH is where they see new equipment, meet suppliers, complete professional development and stay current with industry practice.

For many in WA, it is the only realistic opportunity to do so without travelling interstate.

Ironically one of two keynotes at this year’s EnTalks covered the inconsistency and cost burden of site inductions across the industry. Sue Twartz pointed out that unlike VenuesWest, many venues have streamlined and harmonised inductions.

Despite managing 14 venues with large staff counts, no VenuesWest staff registered to attend ENTECH in Perth.

ENTECH organisers say they made multiple approaches to the WA Government seeking some form of recognition or support for the event, whether through the Events Industry Association, through government tourism and events bodies, or directly. The response, they say, was silence. No incentive, no engagement, no acknowledgement that an event serving the technical production sector was worth the government’s attention.

For context, the WA Government’s Economic Diversification Policy identifies events as a key pillar of the state’s economic strategy. ENTECH CEO Kate McKenzie has written to Minister for Creative Industries David McGurk outlining the situation and requesting the government’s active support for the event’s return to WA. As of publication, no response has been received.

The White Card crisis

The compliance issue that triggered the final break played out in the days before the 3 June show.

ENTECH’s bump-in model is unchanged across 105 show dates. Exhibitor staff enter the venue only after freight is in position and machinery is parked. They work under the direct supervision of inducted touring and local crew. The process has been accepted by every venue, in every city, across Australia and New Zealand, without exception.

Five days before the Perth show, tour logistics manager Julius Grafton began the venue’s online pre-accreditation and encountered a requirement for a White Card, the construction industry safety credential issued under the national Construction Induction Training framework. Of the seven ENTECH touring crew, two held it.

A conference call with the Acting General Manager appeared to resolve the matter: QR sign-in would be sufficient. That clearance was given with CEO Kate McKenzie present on the call. The same day, with the ENTECH team mid-run in Adelaide, venue operations staff countermanded the agreement. All crew required a White Card. The Acting General Manager subsequently denied having given the clearance.

Five crew members spent the equivalent of a full working day each completing the online course with a Registered Training Organisation. The old days of ‘tick and flick’ courses are over, this one had 116 multiple-choice questions with approximately 20 video modules including a filmed demonstration of donning personal protective equipment. One crew member completed the assessment in an airport lounge. Another failed a module because their hearing protection was deemed insufficiently tight. The final White Card was issued the day before bump-in.

ENTECH’s two media partners, Cat from ALIA and Jason Allen from CX Magazine, did not have time to complete the course and were locked out of the bump-in entirely.

“There are no cranes, no overhead rigging, no structures above 2.5 metres. Our exhibitors set up pop-up displays and plug in cables. Calling that a construction site is not a safety standard. It’s a bureaucratic interpretation that has no relationship to our industry,’  said ENTECH’s Julius Grafton.

A standard applied selectively?

The White Card requirement becomes harder to defend in light of what happened, or didn’t happen, at other events at the same venue.

CX Magazine holds a written statement from a named industry professional who worked a major international production at Perth HPC. That person states they did not hold a White Card and did not complete an induction. Their account: “we didn’t have White Cards and I didn’t do the induction. Pretty sure I would have heard about it with everyone complaining.”

CX Magazine has also been advised that VenuesWest operates, or has operated, an alternative supervised worker system for international touring crew who do not hold Australian White Cards, allowing unqualified workers to be present on site under the supervision of a credentialled person. ENTECH’s bump-in model is functionally identical to that arrangement.

VenuesWest did not offer that alternative, and says it was not made aware one existed. Grafton says “that’s what the Acting General Manager was referring to on our call. There are two sets of rules, venues and promoters know international crew cannot and will not do White Card courses, so they engineer a work-around. Which we were denied. Worse still, we asked if our non White Card holders could sit in the arena and direct the local crew. Venue said no, they were inflexible on everything. The double standard is pure hypocrisy”.

CX Magazine has put 16 questions to VenuesWest, including questions on the supervised worker arrangement and the consistent application of White Card requirements. VenuesWest had not responded before publication.

The COO call

After Grafton began posting on his socials about the compliance crisis, posts which gained significant traction across the industry, VenuesWest COO Peter Bauchop telephoned Kate McKenzie. The message, as McKenzie recounts it: remove Julius Grafton’s personal social media posts or VenuesWest would take legal action against ENTECH Roadshow. She replied his posts were personal.

Grafton’s posts were factual, specific, and supported by photographic evidence of VenuesWest staff on the ENTECH floor without high-visibility vests during the same bump-in in which the hi-viz requirement was being enforced against ENTECH crew.

What happens next

ENTECH 2027 will visit Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. The New Zealand leg, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, continues. Perth and Adelaide have both been dropped from the 2027 tour, for different reasons. Adelaide will return in future years.

For the WA production community, the loss is practical. ENTECH was the primary forum for seeing new production technology, meeting suppliers face-to-face and accessing professional development without travelling interstate. That touchpoint is now gone, with no obvious replacement.

Whether it returns to W.A. depends, the organisers say, on two things: a venue environment that can accommodate a touring trade show without treating it as a construction project, and a government willing to acknowledge that the technical production sector is worth supporting.

Neither is currently in evidence.

VenuesWest and the Minister for Creative Industries were both invited to respond to questions raised in this article. The Minister did not repsond, but a spokeperson for VenuesWest said;

“VenuesWest takes the safety of its contractors, patrons and staff as its highest priority and our procedures align with the Work Health and Safety Act and associated legislation. These procedures are implemented to ensure the safety of all workers and patrons.“