EXCERPT: More than a quarter of a million people have signed a petition calling for Sydney's New Year's Eve fireworks to be cancelled and the money spent on fighting fires that threaten the city. Some A$5.8m (£3m; $4m) was reportedly spent on fireworks in Sydney last year, the petition says. The display should also be cancelled as it "may traumatise some people" who are dealing with "enough smoke in the air".
But Sydney's lord mayor Clover Moore said the fireworks would go ahead. [...] the fireworks were planned 15 months in advance and most of the budget had already been spent. "We can't cancel the fireworks and even if we could, doing so would have little practical benefit," the lord mayor wrote on the petition's website. However, Australians who signed the Change.org petition said a firework display would be an "insult".
EXCERPT: . . . “We know that cancelling the fireworks will have zero practical benefit for those fire-ravaged communities,” Tanya Goldberg, the Sydney NYE head of audience told Today this morning. “The one thing that will help those communities is to go ahead with the event and leverage the power of it to drive people to donate, to demonstrate their generosity by going to the Australian Red Cross disaster relief and recovery fund.”
[...] When asked if there would be any kind of tribute to the tireless efforts of volunteer fireys during the show, Ms Goldberg said “no”. “There will not be an overt tribute to the firefighters – (creative) plans were put in place months and months and months ago, but we are doing everything to throw our support behind them,” she said.
[...] In many rural and regional areas, where the “risk is very different”, total fire ban exemptions haven’t been granted for local fireworks celebrations.
Dec 29, 2019 11:14 PM
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