ACT Greens leader Shane Rattenbury’s impromptu invitation to the organisers of a controversial music festival to bring the event to Canberra is, on the face of it, understandable.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The festival, Defqon.1, has been banished from Sydney and NSW after two people died during the event last month, three were placed in critical care and hundreds of others needed medical attention due to suspected drug overdoses.
NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian vowed to never again allow the rave to take place in NSW, so as to avoid needless deaths of young people as the result of illegal party drugs.
Many have since urged her to reconsider, citing the role Canberra has played in allowing the country’s first pill testing trial at the Groovin’ the Moo festival in April.
Advocacy groups including STA-SAFE, which ran the trial, maintain that a zero-tolerance approach to drugs is no longer the best one, and that pill testing may have saved lives at Defqon.1.
The ACT Greens has been a vocal proponent of government-supported pill testing, and the success of the Groovin’ the Moo festival has certainly boosted Canberra’s image as a progressive and tolerant host when it comes to arts and recreation.
This reputation was partly tarnished last month, when the National Capital Authority, a federal body, refused to allow pill testing for this year’s Spilt Milk festival, due to take place next month on NCA-controlled land.
For the purposes of our progressive image, the discrepancy in policy according to blocks of land that are often side-by-side in an already small town is something of a quirk in our planning laws.
It’s now unclear when and where pill testing will be conducted in Canberra again, but Mr Rattenbury, who is minister for justice and community affairs, may well have the answer when it comes to a popular Sydney rave.
He last week wrote to Defqon.1’s organiser, Q-Dance, offering the ACT as a potential future venue for the dance festival, maintaining that the territory government might also allow for pill testing to be undertaken, if the offer was taken up.
‘Might’ here is the operative word; it’s not at all clear where such an event would be held in Canberra, and while the Groovin’ the Moo trial was considered a success, backed by the ACT’s police service, a repeat trial can’t necessarily be taken for granted.
Police at the time said the trial had helped authorities to identify new drugs they had not been previously aware of, and other experts have pointed out that many festival-goers will opt to ditch their party drugs if a test shows they might be dangerous.
Still, the Defqon.1 deaths have rattled many, and the NCA, as a federal body, has not yet budged on its no-drugs policy for festivals.
Rattenbury’s letter, though, makes the distinction between safety - pill-testing - and the avoidable risk of a zero-tolerance policy of drugs at a rave, of all places.
He could well have a point, but his letter to festival organisers, unprompted and so soon after the tragic event last month, could well be seen by some as opportunistic.
