ALMBC Welcomes Victoria’s New Live Music Overlay And Makes The Case For Special Entertainment Precincts
The Victorian Minister for Planning gazetted Amendment VC305 on 26 October 2026, adding a new Live Music Overlay to every planning scheme in the state. The ALMBC has released a detailed response that welcomes the change and sets out the protections Victorian venues still need.
The overlay gives councils a tool to map individual venues or whole precincts and to require new housing nearby to be built with proper acoustic protection. Councils can also add their own requirements, including protecting new residents from noise from venues that haven’t opened yet. The amendment moves the state’s live music policy into the “cultural places” section of the planning scheme, tidies up clause 53.06 (Victoria’s agent of change provision) and stops the VicSmart fast-track process from being used to get around the live music rules.
In form, the overlay is close to what the ALMBC asked for in our April 2026 submission to the EPA’s live music precinct noise review, where we called for councils to be able to protect areas of any scale, from a major precinct down to the space around a single venue.
The overlay remains a planning control over new housing, though. It doesn’t change the noise limits venues have to meet or the way complaints are handled, and it leaves old permit and liquor licence conditions untouched. Those are the protections Special Entertainment Precincts offer in New South Wales and Queensland. The overlay also doesn’t yet cover any venue, as each council has to run its own planning scheme amendment to apply it.
ALMBC Executive General Manager Ant McKenna said the change was a solid step forward.
“Councils now have a proper tool to map their venues and make sure new homes are built for the neighbourhood they’re moving into. Victoria led the country on agent of change in 2014, and the next step is the full precinct protections, to keep up with other states, to keep venues open once a dispute turns serious,” he said.
The ALMBC’s response compares the overlay with the NSW and Queensland precinct models, sets out what has and hasn’t been delivered against our April asks, and calls on the Victorian Government, the EPA and councils to:
- apply the overlay quickly to precincts councils have already identified, starting with Yarra and St Kilda, and fund councils to do the work
- legislate a statutory Special Entertainment Precinct framework that lets precinct plans set sound rules and trading hours and override conflicting legacy conditions
- release the EPA’s preferred options from its live music precinct noise review
- tighten the waiver provisions in the new rules
- fund acoustic upgrades and sound management training for grassroots venues, including in regional Victoria.
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