☕️ Pill testing in Queensland from next week

Good morning!

It seems some of you weren’t happy with the answer to yesterday’s rebus puzzle.

A lot of you thought it was ‘pointy end’.

Sadly, we don’t make the rules here*.

*We do. The answer was ‘beginning of the end’.

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Quote of the day

“I told the Foreign Minister, Australians were shocked at the sentence imposed, and I made clear to him that the Australian Government will continue to advocate on Dr Yang’s behalf.”
Foreign Minister Penny Wong on her meeting with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, where she discussed Australian Dr Yang Hengjun. The writer was recently handed a ‘suspended death sentence’ while detained in China. Wang did not speak at the press conference.

Stat of the day

$US451 million ($AU690m)
The street value of a batch of cocaine intercepted by Bolivian authorities, the second-biggest bust in the country’s history.

Today in history

2006
Former Twitter-CEO Jack Dorsey posted the first tweet, which read: “just setting up my twttr”.

I’ve got 30 seconds

Some headlines from this morning:

• Victoria’s decision to pull out of hosting the Commonwealth Games has cost the state around $590 million, according to new estimates. Former Premier Dan Andrews announced Victoria would not host the 2026 CommGames in July last year, citing budget concerns. The Victorian Auditor-General’s Office examined the cost of “securing, planning for and then withdrawing from the Games”. It found 64% of costs were from “settling the cancellation” of its contract with the CommGames Federation – the event’s official organising body. 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 U.S. state of New York. Governor Kathy Hochul described the decision, which was passed into state law, as ushering in “a new era”. Hochul said, “any woman walking into a New York State pharmacy will be able to purchase birth control” which she described as “essential health care”.

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Queenslanders will be able to access pill testing for the first time at a music festival next week

Queenslanders will be able to legally access pill testing for the first time at ‘Rabbits Eat Lettuce Festival’ over the Easter long weekend.

The Queensland Government will spend almost $1 million over the next two years to support the rollout of pill testing services across the state.

Here’s what you need to know.

Pill testing

Pill testing is a service that allows people to understand what’s in a substance before they take it.

Currently, it can only be legally accessed at the country’s single fixed testing centre in Canberra, which will run until December this year.

The Queensland Government has agreed to run pill testing on an ongoing basis at both fixed and event sites. This month’s music festival will be the first event site, while fixed sites will be announced later in the year.

Government view

In a statement, Queensland’s Minister for Health Shannon Fentiman said: “These services are all about harm minimisation; we don’t want people ending up in our emergency departments - or worse losing their life.

“I look forward to working with the successful providers who I know bring extensive experience and expertise in delivering harm reduction services and working with people who use alcohol and other drugs.”

Opposition

When the Government first announced it would be legalising pill testing in the state last year, the Liberal-National Opposition said it would not support the rollout.

Deputy Leader of the Opposition Jarrod Bleijie said at the time: “There is 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.”

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NSW Police strip searched over 1,500 children from 2016 to 2023

NSW Police conducted more than 1,500 strip searches on children aged 10-17 between 2016 and 2023, a new report has found.

That’s an average of 220 searches per year, according to Redfern Legal Centre (RLC) analysis of NSW Police data.

The community legal centre’s report found First Nations children made up almost 45% of underage searches, “despite being only 6.2% of the population aged 10-17 in NSW”.

RLC also said the searches rarely led police to illicit items.

Strip searches

There are two types of police searches in NSW. General searches involve police patting down a person’s outer clothing, and passing a metal detector over them.

Strip searches – when a person is required to remove their clothing – should only be carried out in “serious and urgent” circumstances.

Before conducting any search, an officer must have a reasonable suspicion that a person is carrying an unlawful item, like drugs.

NSW Police cannot search a child younger than 10-years-old.

Findings

According to the new RLC report, NSW police conducted 1,546 strip searches of children between July 2016 and June 2023.

The youngest person to be searched was a 10-year-old boy. At least two First Nations boys aged 11 were searched.

Several 12-year-old girls were searched during this period. First Nations girls made up 90% of these strip searches.

According to RLC, “First Nations children are strip searched at a younger age compared to non-First Nations children”.

Search items

The report said, “the younger the child, the less likely” it was that police would find an item during a strip search.

For example, less than 1% of searches of 11-year-olds led police to discover any illegal items. That’s compared to searches of 17-year-olds, which led police to illegal items during 45% of searches.

“Most strip searches yield no discovered items, and in cases where drugs are found, they typically involve minor possession,” RLC noted in its findings.

47% of strip searches of children took place in public, i.e., not in a police station.

Boys represented 75% of all children strip searched during the seven-year reporting period.

However, strip searches of girls increased by more than 50% between 2022 and 2023.

Swipe to see a breakdown of strip searches by age.

Strip searches by age (2016-2023)

Redfern Legal Centre

RLC has called on the NSW Government to immediately pause strip searches on 10 to 17-year-olds.

“The law must change to protect children,” it said.

One of the report authors, Samantha Lee, called strip searches an “invasive” and “harmful process”. Lee called the overrepresentation of First Nations children in the report, “simply unacceptable.”

“NSW Police have strip searched the equivalent of 51 classes of school children,” she said.

NSW Government

NSW Police Minister Yasmin Catley said the state’s police force “take their powers extremely seriously”.

She acknowledged that the report’s findings “may be cause for concern for the community,“ and said she shared “some of those concerns”.

Catley said she’s held talks with “key stakeholders” on the matter of child strip searches and that it was her job as Police Minister to consider whether current policies are “fit for purpose”.

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As we mentioned above, Queensland announced yesterday that the country’s first permanent pill testing service will begin at a music festival next week.

Pill testing is a highly contentious issue, but with two jurisdictions now allowing it, what can we expect to see from the rest of the country?

We explore where pill testing is up to across Australia in today’s podcast.

Give me some 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 U.S. singer will play her 20th show of her current leg of the Summer Carnival tour in Townsville on Saturday.

TDA tidbit

Ever heard that old song ‘Dancing in the Street’? (“All you need is music, sweet music” ring any bells?) The song mentions Chicago, D.C., and New Orleans, but maybe it should have referenced Cambodia. There’s been a recent social media trend in the South-East Asian country of people literally dancing in the street to musical car horns.

It’s become so popular that Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Manet has launched a crackdown on custom car horns and has urged kids not to dance on the road.

Manet called on the country’s transport minister and police commission to provide new guidelines on horn standards, describing it as an effort to “prevent anarchy on public streets.”

Beep beep.

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