Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I refer to Spilt Milk, the music festival in the ACT that has announced it won't be pill testing in November because they neglected to get the appropriate permissions from the National Capital Authority. I know the ACT government is very excited about pill testing, but I've got a message to Australia: I don't think that my kids should go to music festivals and be offered drugs called 'safe' in music festivals. Spilt Milk says, in the fine print, 'no illicit substances', but then they are also going to be testing drugs inside. It's either drug-free or it's not drug-free. I don't want my children offered drugs in a musical festival and be told that they're safe. As a medical specialist, there is no such thing as safe MDMA; 100 per cent pure MDMA kills kids every year. In the UK alone, in the last four years, there has been an increase in deaths by 50 per cent, a doubling of deaths due to new psychoactive substances.

If you're going to test drugs, test them somewhere outside the music festival. Once you're inside, it deserves to be a public event run by private operators that is drug free. It is not at the moment. This is not a place to take a small sample from a pill, say, 'I've tested it; it's safe—I didn't test all the tablet' and the drug that's dangerous and kills you is on the other side of the tablet. There is no such thing as a safe tablet if I take 10 of them. Lastly, if a drug is not safe, it's handed back to the owner, who on-sells it inside the festival to someone else. There's no place in this country for pill testing.