Chair: Libby Harris, University of Technology Sydney

Panellists: James Thorpe, UNSW Law & Justice; Phillip Wadds, UNSW Law & Justice; Jess Miller, Councillor at City of Sydney

Abstract: The night-time economy frame has served its purpose. It made the night legible to government, gave it an advocate in economic development portfolios, and justified investment in precincts and regulatory reform. But it measures nightlife in spend, foot traffic and trading hours, while the conditions that make nightlife viable sit largely outside that ledger. Venue tenure, workforce conditions, cultural infrastructure, safety by design, sound, transport and community consent are treated as externalities to be managed rather than as the system itself. This panel starts from a different premise: that the night is a system. Licensing, planning, policing, transport, cultural policy, housing and workforce settings each operate with their own logic and timeframe, producing outcomes no single actor intends or controls. Built to measure output, the economic frame cannot see these interdependencies, and so cannot see why venues close, why harm persists, or why cultural infrastructure is lost to decisions made elsewhere. The sustainability question is whether the system produces the conditions nightlife depends on, or erodes them. Sydney's nightlife recovery is managed as an economic development problem; what if it is a systems problem? The session opens with a short framing presentation drawn from doctoral research mapping Sydney's nightlife as a system, then asks speakers to name the decision made in someone else's portfolio that most shapes their work — surfacing the dependencies the economic frame renders invisible. It closes by asking what would have to change for the system to sustain what it currently erodes, before opening to general discussion.

Andreina Seijas, Founder and Principal at Night Tank

Abstract: Extreme heat is changing not only how people use cities, but when. As daytime temperatures become increasingly difficult to navigate, activity can shift towards cooler hours, raising new questions about the role of the night in how cities adapt to a warming climate. Recent research combining anonymised, large-scale bank card transaction data and daily temperature records from Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide provides evidence of this shift. Analysis of consumer activity across the 24-hour cycle during extreme heat events (≥35°C) reveals a clear temporal pattern: economic activity falls most sharply during the hottest afternoon hours, while evening and night-time activity is considerably more resilient. These findings point to an overlooked temporal dimension of climate adaptation. As extreme heat makes parts of the day less hospitable for work, consumption and social activity, the capacity to shift into cooler hours becomes increasingly important. This reframes the night not simply as a space for leisure and entertainment, but as a period in which a broader range of urban activities may take place. Climate adaptation may require cities to adapt not only in space, but also in time. What would it mean to treat the night as part of a city's climate adaptation infrastructure? Building on these findings, the presentation considers implications for opening hours, public transport, public space, cooling and access to essential services after dark. It also raises questions of temporal equity: who has the capacity to reorganise their day around the heat, and who doesn't?

Chair: James Thorpe, UNSW Law & Justice

Panellists: Freek Wallagh, Night Mayor of Amsterdam, Michael Rodrigues, NSW 24 Hour Economy Commissioner, and Michael Kill, CEO Night Time Industries Association UK

Abstract: The proliferation of night offices across global cities has generated an emerging body of comparative scholarship documenting their functions and classifying their institutional forms. Less examined is how a night office's structural embeddedness — its legal form, funding source and position inside or outside the state — determines its capacity for independent public advocacy; and how the governmental tier at which it is pitched further conditions that relationship. Offices positioned at higher tiers of government generally command greater resources and cross-portfolio convening authority; they may also be more deeply enmeshed in the accountability structures that constrain candid public challenge of the administration of the day. That constraint is especially consequential in a policy domain as politically contested as nightlife, where governments face recurring pressure from law enforcement, residential amenity and public order agendas that frequently run counter to the interests the night office exists to champion. Three cases illustrate the design tension directly. The NSW 24-Hour Economy Commissioner is a state-level statutory office whose Commissioner holds ordinary public servant status, commanding cross-portfolio reach exceptional by international standards, but whose statutory advocacy independence, under the enabling Act, extends only to advice given privately to the Minister. Amsterdam's Night Mayor operates at the municipal level through Stichting N8BM A'DAM, an independent non-profit foundation with no formal statutory authority, and as such is structurally unyolked — the foundation describing its own function as a "thorn in the side" of the City Council. London's Night Czar, a mayoral appointment established in 2016, occupied an intermediate configuration without the resources of the former or the structural independence of the latter; the individual role lapsed following Amy Lamé's resignation in 2024. In the United Kingdom, proposals for a national night office — one that would sit in a federated relationship with existing city-regional NTE bodies — are under active consideration by the new Burnham government, lending the comparison immediate policy stakes. The panel asks what design choices — legal form, funding source, statutory authority and governmental tier — determine a night office's capacity for independent advocacy, and whether the tension between institutional reach and advocacy autonomy is soluble by design or simply a 'cost of doing business' endemic to the position.

Michele Acuto, University of Bristol, Anna Edwards, University of Melbourne

Abstract: The last two decades have seen a flourishing of nighttime initiatives around the world. From the expansion of policy focused on the night time economy (NTE), growth of models of nighttime-centred convening from night councils to committees and boards, or sprawl of a variety of leadership setups, from offices of the night life to NTE managers and night mayors, we are not short of governance experiments to manage what happens after dark in cities. Yet we are also at a point of relative turbulence and dissonance: in several contexts around the globe, NTE initiatives or roles have been folded, while in some they have expanded in scale or taken even broader purview. In others, consideration of the NTE is starting anew, while in some it is transforming. So, what is the state of nighttime governance internationally amidst all of this? The paper presents an initial comparative assessment of nighttime governance roles and strategies for the mid-2020s, updating similar late-2010s efforts and considering whether nighttime governance is seeing an expansion and growth, or conversely a withdrawal and backlash, asking what it takes to keep up a quarter-century-old momentum across diverse political contexts, and what it might take to step up a wider global recognition of this critical area of urban policy.

Phillip Wadds, UNSW Law & Justice; Bianca Fileborn, University of Melbourne; Anna Edwards, Ingenium Research

Abstract: Night-time hospitality work in Australia has been long recognised as a "conducive context" for sexual harassment and assault, yet little is known about the nature and extent of these harms. Activist-led initiatives, including Sorry, Not Sorry and Not So Hospitable, have drawn attention to the issue, with several smaller qualitative studies finding it is pervasive. Contributing factors include high customer contact, gendered expectations around staff presentation and interaction, male dominated leadership, perpetration by owners and managers, normalised alcohol and other drug consumption, and a culture in which harassment is treated as "part of the job". While policy and practice responses have emerged in several Australian jurisdictions, such as sexual violence related content in Responsible Service of Alcohol training and city-led programs in Melbourne and Adelaide, these have rarely been rigorously evaluated and have tended to focus on patron rather than worker safety. This paper will present interim findings from the Workplace Harm in Hospitality project, the largest ever study conducted examining experiences of people who work in licensed premises at night in NSW. Combining quantitative and qualitative approaches, the project documents hospitality workers' experiences and perceptions of workplace harms, with a particular focus on sexual harassment and assault. We present a high level-overview of findings, focusing in on the situational, structural and environmental dynamics of harm, and discuss their implications for regulation, industry practice and prevention.

Alison Young and Jesse Mentha, University of Melbourne

Abstract: For night-time workers, a number of well-known adverse consequences can arise, such as short-term disruption of circadian rhythms, as well as longer-term serious health problems such as the risk of diabetes, cancer and heart disease. This paper also examines workers' fears and experiences of crime and victimisation, and draws from criminological research on the experiences of those vulnerable to injury or harm in public space and geographical scholarship examining affect and atmospheres of urban places. Centring on the experiences of food delivery riders, office cleaners and street cleaners, this paper will discuss (the risk of) victimisation during night-time work, including injury from traffic, assault and sexual assault, verbal abuse, and homicide, as well as the isolation, disconnectedness, and asociality of night work atmospheres. For those working a night shift who are at risk of victimisation, the night-time workplace is thus a potential crime scene.

Sam Whiting, RMIT University

Abstract: The Australian venues sector is stuck between pre-pandemic status quo thinking and post-pandemic crisis management. Despite a clear shift in the market for live music, the sector remains resistant to the kinds of structural changes needed to improve long-term resilience. Meanwhile, new models abound overseas (Whiting 2026). Yet despite significant developments in the UK and Europe, the Australian venues sector and broader live music industry seems fixated on returning to a pre-pandemic business-as-usual approach. This approach is clearly unsustainable and risks long-term decline. Taking the default Australian model of a commercially leased, for-profit live music venue as its case study, this paper demonstrates how and why this model is no longer fit for purpose, offering an alternative vision for grassroots music venues and nightlife in Australia. Drawing on substantial international fieldwork including 100 interviews with venues, industry bodies, musicians, and live music advocates across Europe and the UK, this paper posits structural changes to both venue operation and ownership designed to improve long-term resilience while deepening pre-existing connections with music communities. It will outline potential policy mechanisms, new institutions, and bespoke initiatives aimed at reclaiming power for the grassroots venue sector and the communities they serve. Such initiatives include cooperative ownership models, not-for-profit, charitable and public venue models, and redistribution mechanisms such as ticket levies, subsidised touring networks, and anti-monopoly interventions. As a manifesto for a post-capitalist grassroots venues sector, this paper provides a blueprint for a more equitable, resilient and sustainable live music ecosystem and nighttime economy.

Freya Linke-Langley, Griffith University, and Ben Green, RMIT University

Abstract: In Australian music scenes, women, gender-diverse people, First Nations people and people of colour are critically underrepresented both on and off stages, and this has consequences for their experiences of nighttime spaces and events. Industry leaders have acknowledged the problems of sexual harm, sexual harassment and discrimination, as detailed in the prominent Raising Their Voices (2022) report. However, change is painfully slow. Grassroots and alternative music scenes are by no means free of these problems, but they can be spaces of community organising and experimentation, giving rise to innovation. This paper considers grassroots initiatives for improving safety and inclusion in music venues and events, drawn from our research in dance and rock scenes in particular. The initiatives range from informal to formal, and from symbolic to material. Drawing on observations and interviews with patrons, musicians, event promoters, and venue operators, we explore the transformative potential of these initiatives, as well as their challenges, limitations, and lessons. In response to problems that span the music industry and nightlife more broadly, these examples offer the prospect of leadership from below.

Jesse Mentha, University of Melbourne

Abstract: This paper traces the co-productive atmospheres of the night through informal sporting practices and the outdoor public spaces they occupy across three spatial contexts within Melbourne. Do-it-yourself sporting practices are gaining popularity, yet their informal and ephemeral nature means they remain invisible and thus often neglected within urban research, policy and planning. I argue that despite their neglect, these self-organised activities offer something unique, a low or no-cost place to socialise at night and build a community beyond the limitations of the high streets or someone's house. In doing so, these activities afford a diverse range of people access to the urban night. However, while some informal sports are inclusive of gender, age and race, others can reinscribe existing social inequities. Using a sensory ethnography approach, I investigate how the night is a deeply relational and atmospheric process for both the participants and for me as the researcher, shaped by memories, social dynamics, and affective intensities. Reflecting on early findings, several groups often cluster together, revealing how atmospheres are navigated collectively and differently, across time and place, in different seasons as well as with different group dynamics. Exploring participants' experiences of place and practice, the quieter urban rhythms make these activities possible. Outside of the formalities of the daytime, players take advantage of quieter urban rhythms and at the same time, they must navigate the tactile and sensory conditions of the night in a fatigued state or in spaces only partly designed for nocturnal usage.