Premier defends festival health spend while voicing concern about ‘flippant’ drugs attitude
While defending the government’s huge spending on festival health measures, Gladys Berejiklian has taken aim at Australia Day revellers after a photo appeared of a young woman taking a selfie on an ambulance stretcher.
NSW
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Premier Gladys Berejiklian has taken aim at festival goers after a photo appeared of a young woman taking a selfie on an ambulance stretcher, while defending the huge cost of making safe three “extreme risk” weekend events.
“I was concerned about some reports that young people aren’t taking the issue seriously,” Ms Berejiklian said.
“The flippant attitude cannot be tolerated, you cannot think it’s OK for you and your friends to take ecstasy”.
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The Premier voiced her concern as police revealed a 17-year-old girl was arrested at the Rolling Loud Festival at Sydney Olympic Park after dozens of MDMA tablets were allegedly found stuffed in her bra.
“There are consequences and that’s why we must use all the means we have within our disposal to prevent further injury and deaths,” the Premier said.
The girl was arrested at the 16 years-and-over dance festival on Sunday night by an intense sniffer dog operation run at the gates by the drug-busting Wetherill Park Regional Enforcement squad.
Her “very disappointed” father drove from Nowra to Sydney last night to collect his daughter.
“The father drove up from Nowra a very disappointed person I can tell you,” Detective Chief Inspector Gus Viera, who ran the operation, said.
“He came up last night, he had to be present when police interviewed her as she was under 18. You wouldn’t want to be a parent in that position.
“It’s disappointing for all of us, we don’t want to make that call. But we also don’t want to make the call that their son or daughter has died either, it’s the lesser of two evils.”
Premier Berejiklian defended the government spending $500,000 on extra health measures at three Australia Day festivals.
“What we’ve done as a government is of course do everything we can to prevent death, to prevent serious injury. We’ve upped the ante based on advice the expert panel gave me last year on providing more information (to festivals goers),” she said.
“We’ve upped the ante on health warnings, we’ve upped the ante on the level of resources we’re putting in to keep people safe.”
Police searched 271 people at the Olympic Park event, charged 14 with drug offences and 10 people were taken to hospital.
Nine people were given $400 on-the-spot fines for small drug possessions.
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