‘Complete Lack Of Integrity’: Sydney Festival Slammed As 2022 Event Kicks Off

Despite growing calls for punters and artists to boycott, Sydney Festival’s 2022 event kicked off yesterday, but not without more cancellations overshadowing its launch.

In the lead up to its opening night, more than 30 artists withdrew amid boycott campaigns, following outrage over organisers accepting a controversial $20,000 in sponsorship from the Israeli embassy in Canberra.

Aussie rockers Tropical Fuck Storm were scheduled to perform during the event, but cancelled yesterday before the festival commenced and issued the following statement:

Unbeknownst to everyone out there in internet-mob land, we have been doing our best to talk to Sydney Festival about the possibility of them refunding and ending their partnership with 2022’s star sponsor (the Israeli Embassy, who donated a paltry $20,000 to some dance group).

Rather than immediately announce online that we’d jump ship, we thought we’d actually try to do something in the real world for everyone involved and try to encourage Sydney Festival to do the right thing and fix the problem they created, that problem being Sydney Festival taking on a sponsor so dodgy, pointless and controversial it would inevitably mean that hundreds of unwitting artists (who are having a rough enough time with the pandemic as it is) would become the targets of online harassment, bullying, smear campaigns, ridiculous accusations, misrepresentations and abuse from total strangers who have no idea what’s actually going on behind the scenes, what any artist’s position is or even what they’re talking about..

It is a problem we didn’t create and one we weren't aware of until about 48 hours ago.

At the time of posting, Sydney Festival has stated they have no intention to refund the money or sever the sponsorship relationship, even though the shit sandwich they’ve landed every billed artist in is blatantly obvious to them.

Due to this complete lack of respect and integrity towards the artists billed from Sydney Festival and its partners, we have decided to cancel our two appearances. 

We want to apologise to our fans who have made arrangements to come to the show; we appreciate you all. When we do finally get to play for you, Sydney, it is going to be a corker. We will see you soon!

Others who withdrew in the lead up and called out the event include Melbourne bands Good Morning and Karate Boogaloo, Sydney-based Malyangapa and Barkindji rapper Barkaa, comedian Tom Ballard and more. 

You can read Sydney Festival’s full statement in regard to the funding controversy here.