Family First National Director and NSW Legislative Council candidate Lyle Shelton says Chris Minns has bowed to the radical left of the Labor Party and the Greens by making pill testing permanent, trashing his previous opposition and raising a disturbing question for NSW voters: if Labor’s left can flex its muscles like this now, what will it demand in a second Minns term?
The Daily Telegraph reported today that free and anonymous drug checking will become a permanent fixture at up to 15 NSW music festivals a year from October, backed by $4.3 million in taxpayer funding.
Mr Shelton said the decision was a worrying sign that Premier Chris Minns was losing his grip on the sensible centre of his party.
“Chris Minns came to office presenting himself as the leader of ‘club sensible’ in Labor, and for much of his first term he has managed to keep some of his party’s worst ideological instincts in check,” Mr Shelton said.
“But on pill testing he has folded. He opposed it, he warned against it, and now he is spending $4.3 million of taxpayers’ money making it permanent.
“This has the fingerprints of Labor’s radical left all over it.
“There’s no such thing as a healthy ecstasy pill.”
Mr Shelton said the bigger issue for voters was what the reversal revealed about the likely direction of a second-term Minns Government.
“If this is how Labor’s radical left flexes its muscles while Chris Minns is still fighting for a second term, imagine the influence it will wield if Labor is returned for another four years.
“This could be the first portent of what a second-term Minns Government looks like: club sensible pushed aside and the crazy left increasingly calling the shots on policy.”
Mr Shelton said pill testing itself sent a dangerous and contradictory message to young people.
“The Government says these drugs are illegal, yet it has just committed $4.3 million to checking them for people who intend to take them. You cannot credibly run both messages at once.”
Family First opposed pill testing when Queensland introduced it and when Victoria legalised it.
“There is no such thing as a safe illegal drug, even if tested,” Mr Shelton said. “These pills are cooked up by criminal gangs in dirty labs. A government test at a music festival does not magically make them safe.
“Just because the gangs sometimes get the dosage wrong does not mean the pills that pass the government testers are as harmless as lollies.”
Health Minister Ryan Park concedes drug checking is no “silver bullet” in making drug use safe, while the service’s own harm-reduction message acknowledges that no illicit drug use is safe.
“Nobody queues at a festival because they want someone to tell them not to take the pill they have already bought and carried in,” Mr Shelton said.
“They are looking for reassurance, and the Government knows it.
“No family should ever have to bury a nineteen-year-old because of drugs, and parents campaigning after such unimaginable loss deserve to be heard with compassion.
“But checking illegal drugs is not stopping drug use. It risks normalising it and creating the impression that illicit drugs can somehow be made manageable if government experts are standing nearby.”
Mr Shelton said the $4.3 million should instead be directed towards rehabilitation, prevention and policing criminal drug networks.
“Spend the money helping young people get off drugs, providing rehabilitation places they can actually access, targeting the criminal gangs supplying this poison and giving young people an unambiguous message that illegal drugs can destroy their lives.”
Family First is committed to enforcing laws on drug supply and possession, diverting people into successful programs that help them become free of addiction, and never giving up on the goal of keeping Australia free of illicit drugs.
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