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Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda

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Speaker 1: Bunjelung Cargoton woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges

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Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the

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Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres

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Speaker 1: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the

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Speaker 1: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.

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Speaker 2: Good morning and welcome to the Daily os. It's Wednesday,

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Speaker 2: the tenth of January. I'm Sam, I'm Billy. On Saturday night,

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Speaker 2: ten thousand revelers flocked to Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne who

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Speaker 2: attend the Hard Mission Music festival. Hours later, nine young

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Speaker 2: people were rushed to hospital, including seven placed in induced

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Speaker 2: comas because of a reaction consistent with an MDMA overdose

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Speaker 2: or poisoned batch of the drug. Today, three of those

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Speaker 2: people are still fighting for life in hospital. On today's podcast,

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Speaker 2: I talked to the General secret Free of the Victoria

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Speaker 2: Ambulance Union, Danny Hill, about what happened on Saturday night

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Speaker 2: and what Victoria's paramedics think should be done to avoid

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Speaker 2: a similar incident happening in the future. The first Billy

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Speaker 2: what is making headlines this morning.

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Speaker 3: In an interview with ABC Brisbane, Prime Minister Anthony Albanesi

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Speaker 3: has said he's considering a separate reserve force designed to

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Speaker 3: respond to natural disasters to alleviate pressures on the Australian

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Speaker 3: Defense Force. However, Albanzi also said quote, when you have

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Speaker 3: a natural disaster, you have to be flexible enough to

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Speaker 3: use whatever assets are at your disposal. It comes after

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Speaker 3: a review last year into Australia's disaster responses warrant of

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Speaker 3: significant implications for the Defense Force if they continue to

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Speaker 3: be required to respond to natural disasters.

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Speaker 2: Australians made a record number of complaints to the financial

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Speaker 2: watchdog in twenty twenty three. The Australian Financial Complaints Authority

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Speaker 2: received over one hundred thousand complaints last year. Nearly nine

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Speaker 2: thousand of these complaints were related to scams, which is

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Speaker 2: ninety five percent higher than twenty twenty two. The CEO

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Speaker 2: of the Authority has said that the number of complaints

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Speaker 2: is increasing at quote an unsustainable rate.

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Speaker 3: Pope Francis has called for a global ban on sarrogacy,

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Speaker 3: saying quote a child is always a gift and never

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Speaker 3: the basis of a commercial contract. In a prepared statement,

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Speaker 3: the leader of the Catholic Church said sarrogacy was a

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Speaker 3: deplorable practice and it represented a grave violation of the

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Speaker 3: dignity of the woman and the child. It was part

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Speaker 3: of a long speech made to Vatican accredited diplomats, in

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Speaker 3: a speech often referred to as the Pope's State of

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Speaker 3: the World.

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Speaker 2: Address and Today's good News. An animal shelter in Poland

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Speaker 2: has successfully found warm homes for about three hundred dogs

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Speaker 2: who were freezing outside because there wasn't enough space for

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Speaker 2: them inside the shelter amid temperatures as low as minus

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Speaker 2: twenty degrees celsius. Calling it Operation Frost, the shelter said

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Speaker 2: they are extremely grateful and moved by the response from

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Speaker 2: the public to temporarily house the dogs. Okay, Billy, So

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Speaker 2: for today's podcast, I sat down with Danny Hill. Now,

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Speaker 2: he's the General secretary for the Victoria Ambulance Union and

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Speaker 2: I wanted to talk to him about what happened at

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Speaker 2: the Hard Mission Music Festival on Saturday night in Melbourne.

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Speaker 3: I've actually never heard of this festival. Before we get

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Speaker 3: into the chat, can you give me just a bit

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Speaker 3: of context about the.

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Speaker 2: Festival it's a new one for Australia and it describes

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Speaker 2: itself as an electronic music event characterized by hard style,

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Speaker 2: hardcore and exceptional production. So the event was attended by

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Speaker 2: about ten thousand people at Melbourne's Flemington Race Course. Now,

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Speaker 2: an important note before we get into this chat. According

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Speaker 2: to Victorian Major Events Minister Steve Demopolos, the Poison Center

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Speaker 2: are still diagnosing what caused the hospitalization of nine people

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Speaker 2: from the festival, but as I talk about with Danny,

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Speaker 2: the symptoms are consistent with a negative reaction to MDMA.

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Speaker 2: Here's that chat now. So, Danny, thanks so much for

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Speaker 2: joining us on the podcast this morning.

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Speaker 4: Thank you, thanks for me.

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Speaker 2: Can you give us a rundown on what happened at

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Speaker 2: the Hard Mission Festival in Melbourne on Saturday night?

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Speaker 4: Sure?

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Speaker 5: So, I've spoken to a few of the paramedics who

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Speaker 5: were there. They're obviously mostly our members, and it was busy,

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Speaker 5: it was hot. I think they said around ten thousand

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Speaker 5: people could have been there at one point. But I

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Speaker 5: had quite a few people coming forward with as would

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Speaker 5: normally happen at a venue like that, coming forward with

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Speaker 5: different issues requiring first aid, issues related to the heats

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Speaker 5: there are a number of things like that, but eight

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Speaker 5: of them, eight people come forward or were brought forward

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Speaker 5: or had to be attended to buy the medical teams

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Speaker 5: that were there with a skyrocketing heart rate, skyrocketing blood pressure,

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Speaker 5: skyrocketing temperature so temperature over forty one degrees celsius, and

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Speaker 5: some of them even going into seizure activity.

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Speaker 4: And it's a fairly consistent.

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Speaker 5: Pattern our members would see when they're dealing with rave

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Speaker 5: parties and things like that and people overdosing or having

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Speaker 5: reactions to MDMA type drugs. They obviously needed a quite

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Speaker 5: aggressive intervention from a ZONU centered. There were two emergency

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Speaker 5: doctors eed DOT who are actually on scene providing some

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Speaker 5: medical support there, but even they were overwhelmed and that's

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Speaker 5: where they had to call AV and MICA paramedics had

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Speaker 5: to intubate quite a number of the other patients that

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Speaker 5: the D doctors couldn't get to so that they could

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Speaker 5: be transported to hospital.

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Speaker 2: And did it all happen quite quickly or is it

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Speaker 2: staggered over a number of hours.

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Speaker 5: I'm told it was over about four hours, which may

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Speaker 5: seem like a long time, but what's called an RSI

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Speaker 5: a rapid sequence intubation. It's a resource. It's the sort

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Speaker 5: of thing that a full team would be dealing with

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Speaker 5: at a hospital, and even amongst paramedics, it'd be a

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Speaker 5: full team that would be dealing with doing a rapid

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Speaker 5: sequence intubation on a patient.

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Speaker 4: But to do eight of them over the.

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Speaker 5: Space of about four hours is a lot. It certainly

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Speaker 5: created a big workload for the members who were there.

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Speaker 2: So was the sense amongst your members who were at

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Speaker 2: the events that they were under resourced or weren't given

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Speaker 2: the correct briefings by the event coordinators? Like, was there

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Speaker 2: any sense of catching up?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, look, there was a sense of that. I think

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Speaker 5: that's something that the I'd imagine it's the Department of

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Speaker 5: Healthy would be in beststigating whether the right resources were

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Speaker 5: in place. The organizer has a responsibility to make sure

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Speaker 5: that you have a first aid provider, you have a

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Speaker 5: level of medical support. The feedback from our members is

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Speaker 5: that were certainly overwhelmed because really, it shouldn't require ambulances.

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Speaker 4: Will always be.

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Speaker 5: Called to transport these patients to the hospital, but it

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Speaker 5: shouldn't require ambulance paramedics. Certainly, that amount of ambulance paramedics

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Speaker 5: about twenty at one point being there to provide that

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Speaker 5: sort of support, So it's a combination of factors. Certainly,

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Speaker 5: they were obviously blindsided by the mass reaction, and that

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Speaker 5: is a fairly rare number of very severely critically unwell

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Speaker 5: patients to hit all at once.

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Speaker 2: So can you remember a situation where there's as many

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Speaker 2: people caught up in the same overdose at one event.

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Speaker 5: We've certainly had other events, other rave parties where there's

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Speaker 5: been a lot of people who have been affected by

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Speaker 5: drugs and needed transport to hospital. I don't think we've

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Speaker 5: had eight patients in one hit that needed to be

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Speaker 5: RSID sedated and intubated, so I think from that point

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Speaker 5: it would be one of the worst we've.

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Speaker 4: Had in some years.

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Speaker 5: If ever, it's not an uncommon thing that you have

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Speaker 5: say one or two people that need to be intubated.

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Speaker 5: You might have one or two that are critically unwell

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Speaker 5: but need to go to hospital but don't need to

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Speaker 5: be intubated, and you might have a number of other

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Speaker 5: patients just under a variety of effects. But eight patients

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Speaker 5: that unwell I think is pretty rare, and it's a

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Speaker 5: sort of from a workload perspective, it's not unlike a

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Speaker 5: mass casualty road traffic accident or a bus accident with

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Speaker 5: a lot of patients in trauma, it's as far as

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Speaker 5: the resources that it brings in. It's actually a similar

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Speaker 5: resourcing issue. So they have to do what they would

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Speaker 5: do in one of those events, and they have to

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Speaker 5: call in additional paramedics to fill shifts. Because the event

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Speaker 5: happened in Flemington, they had to bring MICA paramedics. So

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Speaker 5: we have two main levels of paramedics in Victoria, Advanced

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Speaker 5: life support and then intensive care Mobile Intensive Care Paramedics MICA,

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Speaker 5: and they had to bring.

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Speaker 4: MICA in from right across Melbourne in the.

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Speaker 5: West to assist with those patients, and then that leaves

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Speaker 5: a gaping hole in their areas they would normally work,

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Speaker 5: so they've got to call additional paramedics in for that.

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Speaker 5: So it operationally, they have to manage it like it's

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Speaker 5: a giant road trauma.

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Speaker 2: And I'm sure there would have been a sense amongst

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Speaker 2: your members there that eight could very well have been

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Speaker 2: the tip of the iceberg here. I mean, we know

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Speaker 2: that MDMA is produced not in the dozens, but in

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Speaker 2: the hundreds or the thousands. What is the current advice

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Speaker 2: to young people across Victoria and indeed across the country

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Speaker 2: at the moment, on the back of the events of

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Speaker 2: the weekend.

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Speaker 5: I mean, I'm sure people hear the say not a

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Speaker 5: drugs message a lot. These particular types of drugs really

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Speaker 5: are Russian rulette, and you do see paramedics are used

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Speaker 5: to seeing these sorts of reactions with this style of

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Speaker 5: drug and all drugs can cause all different types of reactions,

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Speaker 5: but these are really sick patients where they're heading towards

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Speaker 5: brain damage, stroke, heart attack as a result of their

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Speaker 5: blood pressure going super high, their heart rate going super high,

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Speaker 5: their temperature so some of the patients were above forty

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Speaker 5: one degrees celsius. One of the paramedics who was trying

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Speaker 5: to manage a patient's airway, the patient was seizing so

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Speaker 5: much that they couldn't maintain an airway what they call

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Speaker 5: tristmas where your jaw locks up, so they're trying to

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Speaker 5: manage that patient's airway and touching the patient's face was

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Speaker 5: like holding a heat pack, really really crook. And sure

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Speaker 5: all drugs have a reaction to them, but the combination

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Speaker 5: of reactions that are caused by MDMA style drugs are

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Speaker 5: just so deadly because it ups all that you have

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Speaker 5: chemicals in your body that make things go faster, your

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Speaker 5: heart pump harder. It puts those into overdrive. But the

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Speaker 5: chemicals in your body that are there to calm things

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Speaker 5: down and bring things down, they're blocked. So it's like

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Speaker 5: turning up the dial on a heater like an old

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Speaker 5: boiler heater, but turning off the safety valve at the

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Speaker 5: same time, and it can be catastrophic.

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Speaker 2: So is the message from the union don't do drugs.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, that's obviously the message. If you could wave a

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Speaker 5: magic wand that would be what.

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Speaker 4: It would be.

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Speaker 5: But I think it's much more complicated than that, and

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Speaker 5: I think part of what we've got to break is

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Speaker 5: I'm sure there's clearly when as a paramedic, when work

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Speaker 5: with a lot of people who sadly use drugs, there's

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Speaker 5: sometimes amongst some people, I think, a misunderstanding that if

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Speaker 5: they're taking a pill, it's clean. I would never stick

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Speaker 5: a needle in my vein. I don't drink, but from

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Speaker 5: time to time I'll take a pill because that's clean.

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Speaker 5: And that just if you're a paramedic and you've seen

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Speaker 5: the reactions to some of these things. Some of these

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Speaker 5: drugs are far more dangerous, putting aside overdose amounts and

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Speaker 5: things like that happening with other drugs, they're far more

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Speaker 5: volatile and far more deadly. It can really be the

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Speaker 5: nightmare scenario for the paramedics having to deal with these patients. There.

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Speaker 5: Some of the most dynamic patients that our paramedics see

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Speaker 5: are the ones who take drugs like MDMA.

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Speaker 2: Does the Union think that pill testing should be an

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Speaker 2: option available to those attending these kind of rates.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, definitely. It's not the panacea and it's not going

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Speaker 5: to fix everything, and some people will use it. I

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Speaker 5: don't think everyone will use it. As you rightly said,

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Speaker 5: these drugs are not made in batches of a dozen,

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Speaker 5: and they're made in batches of hundreds, if not thousands,

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Speaker 5: So there's many more out there today. And how do

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Speaker 5: people know what they're planning to take or what they're

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Speaker 5: taking is not the drug that caused the mayhem on

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Speaker 5: Saturday night. There's no way of knowing that. So there's

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Speaker 5: different models with pill testing. There's back of house pill

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Speaker 5: testing where you would advertise this particular drug is a

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Speaker 5: bad batch doing the rounds, and there's a little bit

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Speaker 5: of that can happen, But really I think it's about

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Speaker 5: trying to intercept the use of the drug as close

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Speaker 5: to the person taking the drug as you can. Sure

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Speaker 5: if people listen to this podcast or read the news,

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Speaker 5: they'd hear that message. But you want to get through

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Speaker 5: to people as close as you can and say that

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Speaker 5: particular drug, they're going to say that drug safe, that

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Speaker 5: they might say, Look, that particular drug is the really

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Speaker 5: bad one that caused the mayhem last weekend, and if

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Speaker 5: you take it, you could be exposed to that sort

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Speaker 5: of reaction that we saw. And some people are allergic

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Speaker 5: to certain types of drugs, and they may think that

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Speaker 5: the drug is not laced with anything, but some of

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Speaker 5: these drugs might be laced with fentanyl, the might be

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Speaker 5: laced with cocaine, other sorts of drugs. So at least

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Speaker 5: giving them the knowledge that they may have had a

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Speaker 5: bad reaction to when the past is included in that

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Speaker 5: pill might dissuade them from taking it.

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Speaker 2: It's interesting you mentioned that idea of mass broadcast warnings

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Speaker 2: at these kind of events when there is an issue unfolding.

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Speaker 2: I was reading through some of the social media conversations

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Speaker 2: that were happening around the festival, and there was this

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Speaker 2: discussion being had by people attending the festival about how

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Speaker 2: Victoria police weren't really involved in the response at all,

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Speaker 2: And then when you actually look at the media reporting,

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Speaker 2: they couldn't really know what was going on until about

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Speaker 2: lunchtime the next day. Do you think that there was

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Speaker 2: a breakdown in communication at some point along the way

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Speaker 2: that could have led to I don't want to dance

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Speaker 2: in hypotheticals too much, but could have led to a

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Speaker 2: mass broadcast of a message at the event saying ambulance

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Speaker 2: Victoria have experienced a number of these incidents. Now everyone

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Speaker 2: be careful.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you're right.

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Speaker 5: We broadcast Hey, this thunderstorm ASTHMA might be coming in

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Speaker 5: the next twenty four hours, so have your plan in place.

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Speaker 5: Why can't they say, look, where there's a bad batch

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Speaker 5: of MDMA going around, it looks like this the tablet

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Speaker 5: presents in this sort of way or this color, and

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Speaker 5: give people a heads up. And I think that's effectively.

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Speaker 5: That's the back of house pill testing model, is someone

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Speaker 5: somewhere knows what's in this stuff. Let's tell people what's

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Speaker 5: in it and let them know. Look that this is

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Speaker 5: a really bad variant of this drug. Don't take it.

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Speaker 2: But until then, did any of your members report having

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Speaker 2: tried to get the support of police on the name.

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Speaker 4: Look, it probably wouldn't be.

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Speaker 5: No, that wouldn't have been something that our members would

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Speaker 5: have been tasked with. They're there prearly to deal with.

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Speaker 5: One thing we don't want to encourage is typically with

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Speaker 5: any drug use is people being afraid to dial Ship

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Speaker 5: zero and call for an ambulance and they need help

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Speaker 5: because they're afraid of police being involved. So typically paramedics

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Speaker 5: will do that if there's a safety risk. If they

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Speaker 5: think there's an occupational violence risk, they will absolutely turn

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Speaker 5: out with police. But it wouldn't be unless there was

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Speaker 5: that safety risk that was there. Our members have got

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Speaker 5: quite a bit to focus on. But you're right, proper planning,

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Speaker 5: there's a lot you could look back at this and

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Speaker 5: say we can do a lot better.

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Speaker 2: Danny. I really appreciate your time. Thanks so much for

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Speaker 2: joining us this morning.

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Speaker 4: My pleasure. Thanks, I appreciate it.

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Speaker 3: Pill testing is a big topic for us and it's

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Speaker 3: one that we will continue to report on across the year.

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Speaker 3: We would love to know your thoughts on today's episode.

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Speaker 3: You can leave a comment if you're listening on Spotify,

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Speaker 3: or a review if you're listening on Apple. We will

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Speaker 3: be back again tomorrow, but until then, have a good day.