Council Venues and In House Production

A reader poses this as a debate:

I am concerned that local councils around NSW appear to be electing to offer in house production to potential hirers of council venues, using council technical staff, without charging the hirer a proper labour rate.

This is apparently because council is already paying these workers anyway so they don’t deem it necessary. My objection, as a local provider of production, is that, we appear to be locked out of these venues because we have to charge for our labour as a business should. We have previously worked in these venues for many years prior to these councils decision to keep production in house.

The second part of my concern is in light of the previous situation that local chambers of commerce are now using either the offered inhouse council production because it is so much cheaper or using companies from outside the local area to do these jobs when it comes time for their annual local business awards functions.
This situation is quite bewildering.

As a rate payer I am paying the wages of people on council to put me out of work and being asked to support a business chamber who don’t appear to want to support local businesses.

Is this a trend nation wide? I hope not. So much for shopping locally.

What do YOU think? Comments please!