$12.50 a fair price to pay so another mother doesn’t have to bury her child

Music festival organisers say they can’t pay the $200,000 medical and policing bill needed to stage an event. That’s just $12.50 each for those 16,000 who bought tickets. Seems a fair price to pay so another mother doesn’t have to bury her child, argues Jack Houghton.

• Mountain Sounds cancelled citing government’s ‘war on festivals’

If you have decided the Berejiklian government should be vilified for its role in two prominent music festivals closing down then perhaps you have forgotten how we arrived here.

Perhaps your mind has found a way to forget the sheer gravity of human tragedy which now seems cloaked by the promise of strobe lights, smoke machines and cheap party drugs.

At least five families will not have forgotten the tragedy they experienced this summer.

But as two upcoming festivals were hit with massive bills to pay for medical staff and security some disturbingly callous arguments have surfaced in a bid to keep the party going without festival goers having to pay a cent.

The Mountain Sounds organisers say they can’t pay their $200,000 medical and policing bill.

Revellers enjoying a previous Mountain Sounds Festival. Picture: Mountain Sounds Facebook page.

Revellers enjoying the Mountain Sounds Festival in 2018.

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I feel ill when I hear suggestion that the number five is so small that it is insignificant when compared to the thousands of revellers who pour through the gates at each event.

Too many parents have described their agony in recent weeks and be assured, they do not find the number five small.

Mountain Sounds Festival organisers complained they should not have to pay a $200,000 bill because only “0.30 per cent” of their patrons were caught with drugs last year.

But while no one died, they failed to mention the seven drug-affected people carted off to hospital at their event in 2017.

A few days prior a PsyFari fan took to Facebook to complain that her favourite festival was asked to pay for additional medical staff.

“Why is our government focusing on what makes up only 0.5 per cent of drug related deaths across Australia … the huge music and festival industry is being ripped apart by exorbitant fees,” she argued.

The faces of loss from drug overdoses.

The same people who are now arguing that there is no problem took to the streets only weeks earlier to yell “blood is on your hands” to NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian when she rightly opposed pill-testing.

Curious how the deaths of young people are so easily used as props one moment and disregarded as a statistical anomaly as soon as money becomes an issue. I wonder who they thought would pick up the bill for pill-testing if it did get approved.

But let’s stray away from emotion and look at the economics behind the festival closures.

One death is too many, even if that death is only one of 16,000 revellers at an event.

We know it is too many because we know lives can be saved with the right amount of medical staff, as was the case when taxpayers spent $500,000 staffing critical care doctors at three high-risk festivals over Australia Day.

Festival goers at the FOMO music festival where a 19-year-old girl died. Picture: David Swift.

Those doctors personally saved the lives of several overdosing revellers that weekend and NSW Health says that statement is no exaggeration.

And in return for the efforts of those doctors and paramedics who gave up their evenings to wrestle tubes down the throats of dying children, the festival owners refused to pay the government back, despite some pocketing millions of dollars from ticket sales alone.

Those who enjoyed festivals that weekend did not share the economic responsibility of keeping people safe either. They left that burden up to the wider society.

So who is actually to blame for the closure of the most recent festival?

Festival owners will have their events placed on an “extreme risk” watchlist if a patron dies. Picture: David Swift.

Well, NSW Health and NSW Police are working hard to find the right staffing balance to ensure people are safe if they overdose without being overbearingly expensive.

And so they should. This financial imposition should fall at the feet of those who attend festivals and those who profit from them, not the hardworking mums and dads who are watching this mess from afar with a look of horror on their faces.

The Mountain Sounds organisers say they can’t pay their $200,000 medical and policing bill. That’s rubbish.

When split among the number of people who bought tickets, that’s just $12.50 each.

Seems a fair price to pay so that another mother doesn’t have to bury her child.

Unfortunately, these festival goers would rather spend it on one of those overpriced festival beers.

Originally published as $12.50 a fair price to pay so another mother doesn’t have to bury her child