00:00Interestingly, this report is based on figures which had to be obtained from Parliament by
00:06the Greens MP Kate Fairman after the Redfern Legal Centre applied under freedom of information
00:10laws for this police statistics and were knocked back.
00:14So what it's delivered is basically a decade's worth of data about the number of searches
00:18that have been happening and also the, I guess, the success rate about whether they've found
00:22drugs and in 86.5% of cases over this period from 2014 to 2023, no drugs have been found
00:31in those searches.
00:32So obviously we do see at music festivals in particular in New South Wales, a large number
00:36of people be searched, but it turns out that it's only 13.5% where any amount of drugs is
00:42found.
00:43And of course that doesn't take into account that only a much smaller fraction of people
00:46are found with any, you know, large amount of drugs on them, which is obviously what police
00:50always say they're targeting that drug supply.
00:54So looking at these figures, for example, in 2014, less than 1% of cases actually resulted
01:00in a conviction for drug supply.
01:02So it's a very small number of people that are being caught in this net.
01:06And it has prompted, you know, renewed calls to end these searches, particularly for searches
01:11which are done on the suspicion of drug possession, which is the vast majority of those music festival
01:15cases, certainly.
01:17I should say that this report also doesn't say where the searches took place.
01:21So it might be that some of them were in prisons or people were in custody, but we do know that
01:24a very large number of them do happen at music festivals, which has been really under a lot
01:29of scrutiny in recent years.
01:31So people like the Redfern Legal Centre and Harm Reduction Australia, who are responsible
01:36for analysing these figures and putting out this report today, are calling for an end to
01:40those searches which are based on the suspicion of drug possession.
01:42They're calling for an end to all searches for people under the age of 18, because in New South Wales
01:48you can still be searched if you're 10 years old and above, which is obviously quite young.
01:54And they're basically saying that, you know, these figures show it's a lot of money and resources
01:59that are being put into these searches without a lot of result.
02:03And they're also calling for this data to be public and freely available each year, for
02:09it to be published how many searches and how many, you know, turn up drugs and how many
02:13resulting convictions.
02:14And also for the government to say how much money they're spending on employing sniffer dogs
02:18at music festivals, which is obviously a linked sort of area, which has been under scrutiny
02:22recently.
02:23So then what is the government saying or what's its reaction been to these calls for change?
02:28Well, look, they've largely been defending the practice.
02:30The Premier, Chris Minns, this morning has said that there have been some changes made
02:35to the practice in the last couple of years.
02:37There was a big report in 2023, the LECC, the LECC, which is the internal sort of police
02:42investigation, looked at this practice and came up with a number of recommendations.
02:47And a lot of those, Chris Minns says, were about training and they have been implemented.
02:51So here's what he's had to say.
02:52We don't want people to be in a situation where, you know, police have to undertake these
03:00searches, but there's really no alternative in many circumstances because police are faced
03:06with the widespread distribution of illegal substances that in the right circumstances
03:11can be deadly.
03:12And I know, I mean, I think training must be a part of the process.
03:17I think having a common sense trial about pill testing is important as well.
03:22But if we were in a situation where there was absolutely no searches, there was no drug
03:27detection dogs, it was really carte blanche at music festivals, I think that you would
03:31have major health challenges and I think you'd have more deaths at music festivals than
03:36we're currently seeing.
03:37Chris Minns there saying essentially that he thinks they are a necessary procedure to
03:43continue.
03:44Interestingly, there are still a number of those recommendations from the LECC that haven't
03:48been implemented.
03:49And some of them actually call for Parliament to legislate around this practice, particularly
03:54what sorts of requests can be made.
03:56Some of those invasive requests that are sometimes made as part of a strip search.
04:00It wants Parliament, it's suggested that Parliament should look at those.
04:03Now that hasn't happened.
04:04So there are a number of areas which even from that report by police themselves in 2023
04:08haven't yet been addressed.
04:10So obviously we'll continue to see this being an issue.
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