Bluesfest director Peter Noble seemingly saw the funny side when pressed about the collapse of his music festival.
Noble was confronted for the first time since he called off the 2026 edition of Bluesfest and placed the festival into administration.
When asked questions by a reporter for The Australian, Noble simply offered a thumbs-up gesture to the camera, with no apology forthcoming to the 10,000+ Bluesfest ticket holders and raft of business owners significantly affected by the festival’s collapse.
Noble followed that up by laughing when asked about the allegations first reported in The Australian, with claims of constant bullying and verbal abuse of staff coming to light in the publication’s investigation.
Refusing to answer any questions, Noble drove away from the reporter accompanied by his wife.
Noble, who was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for his services to the industry in 2016, has been noticeably silent since the cancellation news.
The Australian‘s investigation uncovered decades of alleged mistreatment by the music industry titan, including claims of disputes with performing artists over payment.
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Through his lawyers, Noble denied the allegations for the most part, but was “adamant that he had not committed any misconduct” and said “the reporting would be unfair.”
One of Bluesfest’s former senior executives, however, recently offered an inside perspective on what went wrong.
Jason Clair, who was the festival’s head of marketing from 2023-2025, discussed the fallout in a YouTube video, detailing his experience behind the scenes.
“Bluesfest did not fail from one bad decision,” he said. “It failed because a multi-year deficit, a broken trust loop, and an unviable pricing model collided in a fragile live music economy. The margin for error was completely gone.”
Mark Pope, one of the 21 ex-staff members who spoke with The Australian for its investigation, was left unimpressed by Noble’s laughter this week.
“Put it this way: I’m not surprised by the reaction that your journalist got yesterday,” Pope told The Australian after the incident. “To hear not only the laugh, but the contempt that comes with the laugh is not surprising. But it sends a clear signal of pure contempt for any accusation, and any person who felt issues needed to be addressed. It says a lot about the character of the man.”
