Community & Business
19 March, 2025
Festival posters appear as REL fights on
Lettuce festival fights on
Chief rabbit, Erik Lamir, isn’t going without a fight which includes pressuring the SDRC for a temporary license and apparently advertising the festival in Tenterfield.
The director of REL Events, which hosts Rabbits Eat Lettuce festival, has released letters of support from various emergency services in response to a narrowly defeated motion to allow the organisers to hold up to 12 days of events in the Southern Downs annually.
The material change of use application was denied in the last ordinary meeting of council with Cr Joel Richters barred from voting and Mayor Melissa Hamilton casting a deciding vote to break a tie in chambers.
Mr Lamir distributed recent letters of support from the Queensland Police Service, the Queensland Fire and Rescue, Toowoomba East Zone and the Warwick division of the Queensland Ambulance Service. All wrote that they had “no objection to the holding of this event at the proposed venue”.
Mr Lamir accuses the council of rejecting the application “for political reasons” and points to an “apparent pattern of political interference” in the matter which “ignores the immense cultural and economic benefits these events bring to regional Queensland”. In an email to supporters, the organisers said that the event deserves a “fair and transparent decision” process.
Mayor Hamilton is having none of that, telling The Town & Country Journal that “to allege political interference in Council’s decision is offensive to all of the councillors who took much time and effort to consider the application in full, to hear all sides and come to their own decision. I am confident that this council dealt with the development application robustly and in accordance with due process.”
REL, claims Mr Lamir, “injects approximately $3 million into the Warwick economy over a short three-week period” according to their Economic Impact Assessment.
“Additionally, the event license would enable Cherrabah Resort to reopen as a year-round tourist facility”. Cherrabah has been closed since mid-2024.
The organisers are relying on a “glimmer of hope” which is that council puts an agenda item on the next meeting of council, 19 March, to approve a Temporary Entertainment Event Permit application so that this year’s festival “can proceed as planned”.
In email correspondence, REL claimed that if the SDRC fails to add the permit application to the agenda “it will mean they are deliberately avoiding due process and blocking a fair hearing and assessment of our application.”
The Mayor responded that the agenda is being finalised. “Council will not comment on the agenda until it is made public”.
REL has also emailed its supporters asking them to write to Mayor Melissa Hamilton and the other eight SDRC council members. The email, dated 12 March, includes a draft email template that reads, in part “the organisers have consistently shown a commitment to safety, through planning and collaboration with local authorities” and to “uphold the principles of due process by ensuring the REL permit application is formally considered”.
Mayor Hamilton argues that “the vast majority of the Elbow Valley community” were against the festival.
“While supporters of the festival list its attractions as having ‘a strong sense of community’, they ignore the community most impacted by this festival. Our Council thought it was imperative that their voices were heard.”
According to the organisers, ticket sales to the festival “will remain paused” and if postponement occurs, “all Festival Entry Packages will automatically be transferred to the 16th edition of Rabbits Eat Lettuce” in 2026.
However, one Tenterfield resident noticed posters going up for the festival in at least one shop in Tenterfield. When the resident asked whether the festival had been cancelled, the person putting up the poster denied it. The Town & Country Journal asked REL organisers to comment on this but have yet to receive a reply.
