The Presets have said what we’re all thinking: the NSW Government have completely lost their shit.
Australia’s favourite nanny state somehow just got nannier, after its leaders’ favourite pass-time of taking a few tragic but otherwise isolated incidents and using them to incite moral panic and enforce sweeping prohibitive reforms reached a critical mass yesterday, with Premier Mike Baird threatening to ban music festivals because doing that will of course stop all drug overdoses.
Carrying on from the legacy of his Penfolds Grange-sipping predecessor, Barry “Lockout Laws” O’Farrell, the Prem threatened to shut down the state’s music festivals if they didn’t do more to crack down on drug use, after one person lost their life at Stereosonic late last year and another was left in a critical condition after overdosing at Field Day this past weekend.
Such incidents are indeed terrible, but as Kim Moyes of The Presets has pointed out on Facebook, the “solution” of axing everything from Splendour to Subsonic to make sure it never happens again is just plain bonkers (not to mention crap-your-pants terrifying).
“It’s devastating that there have been two drug related deaths at Australian music festivals in recent months,” Moyes wrote. “[But] threatening to shut down NSW music festivals and blaming the organisers for the choices of the attendees? Nuts.”
Moyes also compared the government’s response to festival deaths with their response to road deaths, pointing out that the ten people killed on NSW roads over the holiday period was labelled “a good result” compared to the previous year.
“I don’t want to trivialise their deaths,” he continued, “but no government is threatening to shut down transport. NSW is starting to become a little hard to swallow.”
Greens leader Richard Di Natale offered another dose of refreshing sanity logic, tweeting: “Shutting down festivals won’t stop drug use or save lives. But other approaches, like pill testing, might.”
And 83 per cent of over 10,000 punters who voted in a Music Feeds poll would agree, indicating they’d be in favour of Australian festivals introducing drug testing procedures for ticket-holders.
Especially if the alternative is being one mandatory haircut law short of North Korea amirite?
It's devastating that there have been 2 drug related deaths at Australian music festivals in recent months, I feel for... Posted by The Presets on Saturday, January 2, 2016
