A council ban on drinking on the grassy median strip in Canning Street, Carlton, Melbourne, has sparked a peaceful protest, with picnickers gathering on Friday evening with drinks in hand, punch bowls, and chips.
The gathering, which looked like a typical spring evening, was actually against the rules given the new ban. It was organised as a protest, part of a political saga unfolding on one of inner Melbourne's most beloved streets.
Ban Sparks Community Backlash
The ban began on Monday when the Wine Corner Store, a local bar and bottle shop, announced on Instagram that, "due to a few unrelenting miserable neighbours who have been non-stop complaining to the council", consuming alcohol had been outlawed on the median strips on Drummond, Rathdowne and Canning streets in Carlton North.
The council was reverting to a former classification of the median strips, which are much wider than a typical nature strip, with the effect that they are no longer treated as park spaces. The council said residents had complained about noise, rubbish and unsafe behaviour.
While the council ban followed an initial 29-signature petition submitted by a resident in August, a counter petition calling on the council to revoke the ban gathered more than 7,707 signatures in just a few days.
Peaceful Protest and Community Spirit
The protest drinks on Friday were civilised. Amid the uproar, with people loosely uniting under the banner of Free the Strip!, Adam Pulford, the Greens candidate for the seat of Brunswick at the state election, had posted an invitation on social media for people to join him for a peaceful protest.
People milled around, chatting and offering each other drinks and nibbles, talking about the importance of preserving places for building connections outside work and home.
"We need to be building community spaces and not getting rid of them," said Sam Drummond, who attended the gathering. "Particularly post-Covid, there are very few spaces where people can come together and meet in public, in person."
Others on the strip on Friday had heeded a call from a Canning Street resident, Rachel Richmond, to gather for the same purpose. As the groups coalesced, Richmond said it was "the most civilised act of civil disobedience I've ever participated in".
"This might seem like a very ridiculously middle class thing to protest," she said. "I mean, it's literal champagne socialism but honestly, sitting underneath it is an issue about public space and public enjoyment of space."
The only disorderly incident witnessed on the median strip on Friday was a minor skirmish between a chihuahua and a labrador, both on leads.
Council and Business Respond
However, local councillor Edward Crossland, who represents the Carlton North ward, said there had been "genuine amenity concerns", especially from people living around the Wine Corner Store, and he believed it was unfair the council had been portrayed in a negative way.
Nevertheless, Crossland said council staff had gone too far in banning drinking outright. "There are some people that have been behaving not fantastically but the majority of people are just having a picnic," he said.
Crossland said he was working with council staff to prepare a motion for their next meeting in October, which he anticipated would re-classify the median as open space, and look at "particular" measures to address concerns surrounding the Wine Corner Store.
The venue's owner, Steve Misfud-Ellul, said his business had wrongly copped the blame for large groups choosing to stop on the grass near the wine bar. "We simply sell retail drinks to people and they choose to stop where they stop," he said. "Ninety-nine per cent of the time it's people sitting, picnicking on a patch of grass, with the loudest noise being laughing."
Misfud-Ellul also stressed the council was not to blame. "The council actually were fantastic and they acted on every complaint; they came through, they check and they saw there was no problem," he said.
Political Intervention and Next Steps
The premier, Ben Carroll, waded in on Friday, sharing a post on social media that said: "Consider this unbanned. Because if council doesn't reverse it, we will reverse it for them."
On Saturday, the Yarra mayor, Stephen Jolly, said he was working with Misfud-Ellul, locals and the council to sort out the issue, but reverting to the status quo wasn't an option.
"My solution is either to get an outdoor trading permit for the bar as per what many bars on Brunswick and Smith Streets have; or work with the state government to reclassify the median strip to allow (better managed) drinking and chilling on the strip," he wrote on Instagram. "It's slightly more complicated than it seems, but nevertheless it's fixable."
