But proponents of the service say a national response is required, ahead of the summer festival season.

Pill Testing Australia conducted a demonstration at Parliament House on Tuesday, attended by Labor health spokesman Chris Bowen, key crossbencher Jacqui Lambie and chief opponent of the service, Queensland Liberal National MP Andrew Laming.

Canberra emergency department physician, Dr David Caldicott revealed the group was developing a proposal for a testing service at a fixed location.

"We're already working on static sites. I can't tell you where, it's top secret. But needless to say there are people in this room who are involved," Dr Caldicott said.

The ACT Greens have been pushing for Canberra to trial a static site.

A major festival, Stonefest, will be held at the University of Canberra next month.

Greens leader Shane Rattenbury said a "a fixed pill testing site is not only possible here in Canberra but highly appropriate to deal with the realities of recreational drug use in the ACT".

But an ACT government spokeswoman said on Tuesday a static site was not currently being considered in Canberra.

Meanwhile, Dr Caldicott said little had changed since the conclusion of the last horror festival season, when there was a wave of drug deaths.

"This is the start of a new season, there's nothing proactive in our approach and it's got to change," he said.

He said a federal system of pill testing was the only way to monitor developments in the national drug market.

Dr Caldicott also suggested the concept of pill testing could be deployed to identify fentanyls in the injectables market.

"It's killing hundreds of thousands of people in North America at the moment and we believe it's a significant risk for Australia," Dr Caldicott said.

But Mr Laming described the display as "cowboy biochemistry".

If state governments were to pursue pill testing, he said, they needed to deploy gold standard technology '"or not at all".

Testing should be done through a dedicated laboratory where samples could be sent in and analysed properly, Mr Laming said.

But Greens Senator Richard Di Natale said so-called back-of-house models were not as effective.

"We don't want to introduce a system that diminishes the power of what we know already works and what we know works is when a young person comes in, has their pill testing and talks to a health professional about it. It's that interaction that's so effective in reducing harm," Senator Di Natale said.

Dr Caldicott also described the post-testing consultation as "the secret sauce of the pill testing".

"One of the most important things for us are face-to-face testing. We think of pill testing as a health based endeavour and young people respond best when they have the opportunity to discuss not only with a doctor but with a peer who knows the market," Dr Caldicott said.

Pill Testing Australia's Gino Vumbaca acknowledged the technology they used had limitations, but said they were working with toxicologists to improve its library of substances.

"I think like most things when you start out you don't start at the gold standard, you start at a certain level and build up the expertise and the more we do this, the better we'll get," Mr Vumbaca said.

The consortium said the Groovin the Moo festival in April would be their last free trial in the ACT.

While most of the services were provided pro bono, this year's testing is estimated to have cost $34,000.

At the time, the ACT government vowed to consider directly funding the service, once an independent evaluation was completed.