When the organisers of Return to Rio cancelled their 2024 event in New South Wales, they did so citing a 529% increase in police and medical costs. The figure has been repeated often enough in the press since to start losing its weight. It should not. A line item rising by more than five times its previous value inside a single planning cycle is not a budget challenge. It is a structural signal that the conditions under which an event was viable last year are no longer the conditions under which it can be staged this year. Return to Rio became one of at least twenty-five Australian music festivals to be cancelled since 2022. A…