You and your day

A regular booking cancels at the last minute. A casual chef does not show up for a Saturday night and has not answered her phone. The supplier mentions, in passing, that the price of an ingredient you have stocked for a decade is going up again. A young waiter quietly tells the floor manager that something happened with a customer at the bar and asks if she can swap stations. A migrant kitchen hand mentions her visa renewal is being held up.

The American writer Barbara Ehrenreich spent a year working in low-wage service jobs and wrote that the people doing this work were doing some of the most physically demanding labour in any economy, while being paid as if the work were something close to leisure for everyone else. Australian hospitality lives inside that argument continuously. The work is hard, the wages have not kept up with cost of living, and the workforce holds the political pressure of a country in real time, every shift.

Reading the politics is not separate from running a venue. It is part of how operators decide whose stations to redesign, whose hours to protect, whose suppliers to stay loyal to, and whose customer behaviour to put up with.

Your community and clients

Hospitality sits inside community in ways most industries do not. A pub, a cafe, a restaurant, a club is a place where strangers become familiar to each other, and where political conditions show up in how people treat each other in semi-public space. The local cafe knows the local politics. The corner pub knows the local politics. The wedding venue, the function room, the restaurant on the high street, all of them know the politics.

Different communities have different hospitality politics. A multicultural strip with a dozen restaurants from a dozen cuisines has different politics than a wealthy strip with three or four high-end venues. A queer-friendly bar has different politics than a sports pub. A community pub in a regional town has different politics than a craft brewery in inner Melbourne. A First Nations operator running a cultural-tourism venue has different politics than a chain restaurant on the highway. Each is shaped by who is welcomed, who is not, who is hired, who is not, and what political mood is allowed inside the front door.

When a young waiter asks to swap stations because of a customer at the bar, the politics of harassment, gender, and the protection of staff is at the door of the venue. When a casual chef does not show up, the politics of cost of living, of rental pressure, of multiple jobs, and of the tolerable conditions of the trade is at the door. When a customer behaves as if the staff are decorative, the politics of class, race, and entitlement is at the door. The venue is always already political.

Your Council and neighbourhood

Footpath dining, signage, trading hours, noise rules, alcohol licensing, and the political composition of the local trader association are all shaped at Council level. Inner-city Councils have been politically active on outdoor dining, on small bars, on creative precincts, and on which strips are protected and which are pushed toward chain stores. The political composition of a Council shapes what is possible outside your front door more than most operators recognise.

Whose strip is it? Whose hospitality is welcomed there and whose is left to find a quieter side street? Local hospitality politics is partly a politics of which businesses are allowed to be loud, allowed to spill onto the footpath, and allowed to host live music or drag or community events without being shut down by complaints. A multicultural strip is a political achievement. A queer-friendly strip is a political achievement. A late-night precinct that survives gentrification is a political achievement.

Your state

State politics has been one of the more active layers shaping hospitality in recent years. Liquor licensing, food safety regulation, anti-discrimination law, occupational health and safety, vocational education funding, and the politics of training and apprenticeships all sit at state level. Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland, and Western Australia have moved differently on each of these in recent years, and the differences shape what hospitality businesses can do and how staff are protected.

State politics also shapes who is protected from harassment. Hospitality is one of the industries most exposed to customer harassment of staff, and the conversation that opened up with the Respect@Work inquiry has changed what is expected of every venue. State-level discrimination protection shapes whether a queer staff member, a trans worker, a Muslim woman wearing hijab, or a worker with a disability can expect to be treated decently by customers and protected by management. The state-level layer of hospitality politics covers training, harassment, multicultural affairs, and disability protection, not just liquor and food licensing.

The nation

National politics on cost of living, wages, migration, tourism, and the politics of casual versus permanent work all reach hospitality directly. The federal political conversation about wage theft, about the gap between award rates and lived hospitality reality, about migrant worker exploitation, and about the future of small business in Australia is intensifying. The political settlement is still moving.

The national workforce conversation in hospitality is also a migration, gender, and class conversation. The hospitality workforce in Australia is heavily migrant, often on temporary visas, often underpaid, and often working multiple jobs. Inside that workforce, the conditions vary sharply. A young Australian-born backpacker working in a cafe between travel, a Nepalese international student working in a kitchen for less than the legal minimum, a Sudanese-Australian floor manager building a career, and an older Italian-Australian owner who has been operating for forty years all sit inside the same industry under very different political conditions.

The region

Hospitality across the Asia-Pacific is shaped by very different political conditions, but they reach Australian venues through migration flows, through tourism flows, and through supply chains. Australia recruits hospitality workers from the Philippines, India, Nepal, Vietnam, and elsewhere, and the conditions of those countries shape who arrives. The conditions of Australia, including visa politics, shape what those workers experience here.

Aotearoa New Zealand’s hospitality politics offers a useful comparison. New Zealand has been politically more active than Australia on some workforce protections, and on the recognition of Maori cuisine and Indigenous hospitality traditions. Pacific Island hospitality, often shaped by tourism economies, is reshaping under climate pressure and the politics of who controls the industry on Country.

Regional politics also shapes supply. Most hospitality venues in Australia source ingredients from regional producers, who are shaped by climate, water, and trade politics that reach the kitchen indirectly through pricing.

The world

Globally, hospitality is one of the largest employers of migrant women, racialised workers, and workers in informal economies. The political conditions of those workers shape what hospitality is, in Australia and elsewhere. The politics of cost of living, of who can afford to dine out, of who can afford to drink, and of who can afford to host, is also a global conversation. So is the politics of climate exposure for hospitality businesses operating in coastal, fire-prone, or flood-prone areas.

The political backlash against migration, present globally now, reaches hospitality fast. Industries that depend on migrant workers are politically exposed when the politics of migration tightens. The political backlash against queer rights, against women’s economic security, and against multicultural inclusion is also reaching hospitality. Venues built around those communities feel the exposure first.