Gladys Berejiklian has just disappointed thousands of NSW festival goers

[News]

Premier of NSW Gladys Berejiklian has just disappointed the NSW festival scene after her press release in regards to local music festivals.

After the two deaths at Defqon, Berejiklian proudly claimed that the popular music festival would never take place in NSW again and set about organising a panel of ‘experts’ to do something about it.

Having staunchly denied the positives of pill testing we had been waiting with baited breath for the panel results and it’s safe to say it’s pretty close to what we expected.

The general ideas we got from the conference was that there will be three new policies moving forward.

1.  Further drug education including better frontline training for health professionals
   (This is good) 
2. Improving the regulation of music festivals by introducing a new, specific and consistent licensing regime to improve safety, and provide certainty for the music festival industry and other stakeholders.
   This one seems a little suspect when you consider that the head of the Independent Liquor & Gaming Authority Philip Crawford was part of the decision and festivals are already held to strict licensing regulations
3. New laws to target drug suppliers that will hold dealers responsible for deaths they cause, and trialling on-the-spot fines for drug possession at music festivals.
   This one seems like a bit of a knee jerk in our opinion. On the spot fines could help, but we’d like to see the stats on how many times the dealer is brought into the equation after someone dies from a drug overdose

Things that they’ve ruled out:

• • Pill testing! Here we go again, the NSW Police Commissioner has said that the idea that pill testing will save lives “is a myth”

Police Commissioner Mick Fuller says the idea that pill testing would save lives “is a myth” #NSWpol pic.twitter.com/e5htTjpGGl

— Tom Rabe (@Rabe9) October 23, 2018

So that’s the round up in regards to the future of music festivals in NSW, you can read more about it by following #NSWpol where journalists were live tweeting, and read the official media release here.

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