Hi Ric, it appears the Australian Venue Co do a pretty good job of making sure their venues keep up an acceptable standard of food and drinks. As with all businesses though, there is a variation between venues, with the venues that have had recent upgrades seeming to provide better service and food and drinks.
However, even these vary, as it all comes back to the staff employed, and the staff turnover is pretty high in many of these places as a lot of workers in the hospitality industry are relatively transient, and often see the job as a "fill-in" to something better.
We found that when nearly all the backpackers disappeared during COVID, the service levels for food and drink venues fell right away for around 3 years, and even staffing levels went down, as it was obvious employees became harder to find.
Since the pandemic has been declared over though, it seems things are returning to normal, and the backpackers (who make up a lot of the hospitality staff) are starting to return - resulting in an improvement in service and staff levels.