Already and this this is the daily This is the daily. Ohs oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Thursday, the twenty first of March.
I'm Zara, I'm Sam.
Yesterday Queensland announced the country's first ongoing pill testing service will begin at a music festival next week. It comes just over a year after the state first announced it would move to allow for pill testing. Pill testing is, of course a highly contentious issue, but with two jurisdictions now allowing it, what can we expect to see from the rest of the country. We'll tell you everything you need to know in today's deep dive. But first, Sam, what's making headlines.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong has insisted that Kevin Rudd will stay on as Australia's ambassador to the US even if Donald Trump wins the presidential election in November. This all comes after Trump called Rudd nasty during an interview with former British politician turned broadcaster Nigel Farage earlier in the week. Here's what the former president said.
I heard he was a little bit nasty.
I hear he's not the brightest bulb.
But I don't know much about him, but if he's at all hostile, he will not be there long.
When asked about it yesterday, Wong said, even Peter Dutton has expressed confidence in mister Rudd, who she called a very effective ambassador. Rudd began his role as ambassador in Washington in March of twenty twenty three.
Victoria's decision to pull out of hosting the twenty twenty six Commonwealth Games has cost the state around five hundred and ninety million dollars, according to new estimates. Former Premier Daniel Andrews announced Victoria would not host the twenty twenty six Commonwealth Games in July last year. Citing budget concerns. The Victorian ordered a General's office examined the of securing,
planning for, and then withdrawing from the Games. It found sixty four percent of costs were from settling the cancelation of its contract with the Commonwealth Games Federation. The report called the expense a significant waste of taxpayer money on an event that will not happen.
A year's supply of contraceptives, including the pill, are now accessible without a prescription in the US state of New York. Governor Kathy Hokel described the decision, which was passed into state law. As ushering in a new era. Hochel said, any woman walking into a New York state pharmacy will be able to purchase birth control, which she described as essential healthcare.
And the good news, three time Grammy winner Pink is about to make history with a new record for the most shows ever performed by an artist in Australia and New Zealand on a single tour. The US singer will play show twenty of her current leg of the Summer
Carnival tour in Townsville on Saturday. That is remarkable. So, Sam, yesterday we found out that festival goers attending a music festival called Rabbits Eat Lettuce in Queensland next week we'll be able to get their pills tested by a government backed pill testing service.
And Zara, when you sent me the press release about this announcement, I was trying to remember that we have seen something similar in the past.
Don't lie, Sam. When I send you that press release, we were actually talking about the name Rabbits Eat Lettuce for approximately ten minuts.
I know, and I literally have just worked out whilst we're recording that it's because it's Easter over that weekend and there's no Easter Bunny. And at that festival in twenty nineteen, two people died in their tents with a lethal cocktail of drugs in their systems. But this wasn't the first time that Queensland had had an announcement about pill testing, right.
No, it wasn't. So we found out about a year ago that the government was going to roll out pill testing services across the state, announcing the Palichet Government's commitment to see pill testing happening across Queensland are also known as drug checking. That was the Queensland Government under of course, previous Premier Anastasia Palichet, announcing their plans in feb twenty
twenty three. But it's taken until now for them to actually confirm how the pill testing will operate and what it will actually look like.
Okay, so run me through what we know about how it's going to work.
I will in a second, but I do just want to take a step back first and actually explain what pill testing is for anyone who isn't aware. So pill testing is a service that essentially just allows people to understand what's in a substance before they take it, so the pill is tested and then the people doing the test will tell the person who is about to take the pill what is in it, so that the person can make an educated decision about what to do next.
So that's just a very broad definition of what pill testing is. But now back to how Queensland is going to go about implementing it. So the first thing that we found out is that it's going to start really soon, as I said, next week soon. We also learned that it will be ongoing, so that's a really important fact because the only other pill testing service in the country isn't ongoing in the act, it's due to end in December,
so that's a key difference there. And we also found out that the government are going to commit one million dollars over two years to support the rollout. So that was all of the information that the Queensland government gave us yesterday. And as I said, that was nearly a full year after first making the announcement that we actually got that detail.
And in the year since that first announcement. But also if you look around at any state or territory in the country, there's quite heated political debate about this topic. What was the Queensland government's reason for pushing ahead with this plan.
Yeah, you're right. So we heard from the Health Minister, Shannon Fentiman yesterday and she said that it was all about harm minimization, So that's about focusing on strategies to lessen the harm that someone taking a pill might experience. To her, she said, we don't want people ending up in our emergency departments or worse, losing their life. So a very clear statement thereby the Queensland government about why they're doing it and what their hope is there.
And is the Queensland government doing this with bipartisan support.
Look, I'd say very little policy across the country has bipartisan support, let alone something as contentious as this.
So no.
When the government first announced it would be legalizing pill testing in the state last year, the Liberal National Opposition said it wouldn't support the rollout. So the Deputy Leader of the opposition said at the time there's no safe way to take drugs and the Opposition does not support pill testing in Queensland. Pill testing sends the wrong message and it hasn't worked in other jurisdictions.
That's an interesting point that he said that it hasn't worked in other jurisdictions. What do we know about how it's gone in other state and territories.
Well, I do think it's just one jurisdiction, so we can't use a plural there. So Australia's first and until now only fixed pill testing center launched in Canberra under a six month trial in twenty twenty two, and as I said earlier, it's been extended now to December this year. This pill testing center has found some fascinating results since
it's launched. They've discovered a new recreational drug dubbed cambra ketamine and also a new variant of bath salts, so that's a group of synthetic chemical drugs that can be fatal. Now we have a journal when our team, Daniel Deserto, who is the journal that has really written up all these stories. He's been chasing the Queensland government, He's been chasing the Act government, so he's really been deep diving
into pill testing. He is unfortunately on leave as this big announcement from Queensland happened, but earlier in the year he did speak to the executive officer at Pill Testing Australia, who is Steph Zenitas about the recent results of pill testing in Canbra. Now, pill Testing Australia is one of the that runs the center in the Acts, so she was speaking from the personal experience of having run those. She told Daniel about a rise in demand for pill
testing ahead of spilt Milk in twenty twenty three. She said it was a success, but there was a limited number of people who discarded their drugs after being checked, and I think that that is so interesting. High purity MDMA was detected at the on site pill testing center. They also observed an increase in cocaine purity, which is believed to be driven by shifting patterns of drug supply and narcotic networks here in Australia. So there were lots
of really interesting findings just from that fixed center. That is a trial in the Act alone.
Okay, so we know that the ACT is the only other jurisdiction that's actually got something underway. But there are conversations happening in other states, right.
Yeah, there are, And any Keen listeners would have remembered that one of yesterday's headlines on this podcast was actually about this topic too, and that's because the Victorian government is being encouraged to introduce pill testing, and that push is coming by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners. That is in the wake of the Coroner's Court of Victoria last week finding that the deaths of two men were a result of mixed high dose drugs that the
men may not have known they were taking. The Coroner's Court also recommended the Victoria trial a pill testing service, so similar to the one in the Act, and the story is pretty much the same. In New South Wales, there's been a pill testing trial formally recommended to the New South Wales government that was back in twenty nineteen
and it was rejected. It was part of a New South Wales coronial inquest into the deaths of six young people at music festivals from twenty seventeen to twenty nineteen. But really we haven't seen much movement on this issue from those state governments, so I'd say those are more wait and watch. I don't think that we can necessarily expect for there to be any kind of major movement on these issues anytime soon in those two states.
So I think the results in Queensland will definitely find their way into discussions happening in other states and territories as we get more data in this space and now we no longer have an act example to look at, but also Queensland and for experts to evaluate whether this is indeed a sustainable path forward.
Yeah, well, I mean the Victorian premier said that she was going to get advice after those deaths I spoke about earlier. She did say that there was no plan to introduce bill testing, but she said she'd get advice, so I guess we'll have to see.
Thanks so much for joining us on the Daily os today. We'll be back in your ears tomorrow. If you enjoyed this episode, leave a comment on Spotify or give us a rating on Apple. We really appreciate all your feedback and support for independent media. We'll be back in your ears tomorrow morning. Have a great day. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bunjelung Cargotin woman
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