Smith Nick; Little AndrewHon Dr NICK SMITH (National): The Minister has not specifically addressed the question that I sought about the legal liability of festival organisers. Just to keep it very short and sharp to the Minister: will the provision of drug- and substance-checking services at a festival reduce the liability that a festival organiser will face in the event of a tragedy at a festival event? In other words: has he had any advice from officials about the interaction of this bill and our health and safety and workplace laws around the obligation? And here's the rub of it for the Minister—why I'm concerned—the core of the argument this morning is everybody wants to reduce harm. That's not the question. The question we have as a consequence of providing the substance testing is that you make the organisers of festivals less cautious about trying to prevent drug dealers getting into their festival events that you get people getting less cautious about using the substance because now it's got a Government testing - approved agency that's doing it and as a consequence you'll get increased use and you get increased harm. So the reason for the question is that these provisions might be counter-productive to reducing harm if in fact we have organisers saying Good this law reduces my liability and risk." and that's why I'd specifically ask the Minister what advice he has received what assurances he can give to the committee that that is not a risk that we should be concerned with.Hon ANDREW LITTLE (Minister of Health): I thank the member again for his further clarification and I think the point is this: the only exoneration of liability if you like for the event organiser is exoneration from section 12 of the Misuse of Drugs Act. They won't be liable for prosecution by having the drug-checking services at their event knowing that that means that there will be people at an event that the event organiser controls who are in possession of illicit substances. So they are off the hook for criminal liability for that. They are not off the hook for the range of other duties that they would be expected to exercise in terms of the safety of people.Now if an event organiser knows that somebody is turning up with you know volumes of illicit substances that can cause great harm then that person with great volumes is acting criminally and if the event organiser knows that they would also be liable for not taking steps to remove that person from the place or take steps to prevent such a person from entering that place and they do that through security checking—people coming into their premises. The only point of liability that this legislation prevents the event organiser from being susceptible to is allowing a drug-checking service onsite knowing that that drug-checking service will receive illicit substances. But they must take every other step to ensure people are safe. I might add too for the drug-checking service if they have somebody who comes and surrenders a substance for testing and it turns out that it is highly toxic and very dangerous then the legislation makes it clear in terms of the requirements to act reasonably they will be acting unreasonably if they don't take every step to say "You should not be taking this. This will kill you or come close to it." We you know tell you not to take it. If it is a soft message about "Well you're really taking your chances here but it's up to you." that won't be enough for the highly toxic substance that comes to the knowledge of the drug-checking services and subsequently the person.I am satisfied that the regime that is in place in this bill covers off all those risk areas for the safety not only of the drug consumer but for others attending the particular event."