Australian officials spent AU$27,000 on a 'research trip' to Burning Man
The work trip researched how to put on a similar event in Queensland...
Two Australian bureaucrats spent nearly £15,000 of taxpayer money to go to famous desert festival Burning Man this year.
John Drummond and Rebecca Mantle, tourism officials from Queensland, were on the supposed work trip “to gain insights into current trends, ideas, themes and logistics of a large-scale festival”, as revealed by ABC News.
The entire cost of the trip was $27,000 in Australian Dollars, or £14,715.
The pair met with “key international event partners” at the festival, which hosts around 70,000 festival-goers each year, at the event dedicated to “radical self-reliance”.
A spokesperson for the Queensland tourism board said they were hoping to put on a similar festival in outback Queensland.
Opposition leader Tim Mander combined both criticism and a slick joke in his response, saying “I don’t know about Burning Man, but it’s definitely burning taxpayers’ money!”
Burning Man had another unforgettable year in 2018, one of the highlights of which was Carl Cox’s b2b with Joseph Capriati, which you can enjoy here.
Footage from Diplo and Flume’s b2b also surfaced, to be seen here.
