Stop pushing false hope of pill testing

After five people died from taking drugs at dance festivals this summer, you would think promoters would show remorse. Instead they push false hope, writes Miranda Devine.

You would think after five young people died from taking drugs at dance festivals this summer that promoters of similar events would be remorseful and trying to avoid a repeat, if only to save their own skins.

But, instead, they try to offload blame and distract attention by pushing the false hope of pill testing.

RELATED NEWS: NSW coroner to examine festival deaths

Worse, they seem to mock the tragedies by choosing every more blatant names for their shindigs.

Revellers at Sydney’s Listen Out Festival were met by a heavy police presence. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

“State of Trance” and “Knockout Circus” were bad enough, but what kind of sick joke is it to bill a festival “Hard Core Till I Die”, as the upcoming Australia Day event at the Showground cynically is billed.

Bad taste, to say the least.

Anyway, police drug sniffer dogs will be out in force, to try to avoid that fate for music lovers.

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Exposing the cruel truth

How do supporters of animal activist group Animals Australia feel about their donations being used to inflict cruelty on animals on export ships?

That’s what The Daily Telegraph’s “cash for cruelty” expose has found, with emails from activists to live export workers promising to pay as much as three months’ wages for video footage of sheep being maltreated on ships.

Vision was originally provided to 60 Minutes by a live export worker who allegedly helped create the appalling conditions the animals are seen in. Picture: YouTube

Seems conditions weren’t bad enough for prime time so one worker offered to stage the distress by cutting off ventilation to the sheep.

It makes no difference whether Animals Australia told him not to do so, this is what happens when you offer money for sensational video.

The market provides.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The original version of this article mistakenly identified PETA as being involved in the “cash for cruelty” sheep video affair. It was the organisation Animals Australia, not PETA, which was accused of promising money for footage. PETA was not involved in any way. The Daily Telegraph apologises for the error.