The Hillsong youth event is now under investigation
Hillsong is now under investigation for hosting a youth event that went viral this week for clearly breaching COVID-19 restrictions.
Just as the Australian government reintroduced COVID protocols that severely impacted the music industry, footage emerged of Hillsong’s youth “Summercamp 2022” event flouting those protocols.
Held in Newcastle, the event had hundreds of young people singing and dancing without masks, while the rest of the state had to make do without doing those things.
The megachurch attempted to defend the event, stating that it was “not similar to a music festival in any way,” but that conclusion hasn’t washed with NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet. He told reporters today that he was “completely shocked” by the footage, confirming that the event was “under investigation.”
“I echo the frustration and anger that people right across the state has felt,” Perrottet announced. “What has got us through the last two years has been the efforts and sacrifices that many have made to keep people safe.
That means that many businesses have had to tailor the way that they operate. Many people have had to change their behaviour to keep people safe. Now, we made those rules and even if technically, it was within the rules, it certainly wasn’t in the spirit of the rules.”
Perrottet joined those in the music industry in acknowledging that “Summercamp 2022” was a blatant breaking of the new COVID guidelines.
“These rules aren’t there for the sake of it. These rules are in place to keep people safe and for the 99.95 per cent of people who are doing the right thing, I think everyone would feel completely frustrated and shocked by what they saw last night,” he said.
“And you know, we don’t want to see that happen again. We’ve made it very clear … The authorities will work through that, and my view is that if the legal teams believe it was in breach of the public health order, then my expectation would be that a fine would be in place by the police force.”
This is a developing story. We’ll bring you all future updates.
Check out NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet on the Hillsong youth event:
This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.