NSW Health warns of high-dose MDMA tablets circulating stateA purple shield-shaped MDMA tablet that NSW Health says is representative of tablets in circulation with a higher dose of ecstasy than advertised. Photograph: NSW HealthNSW Health has issued a warning about high-dose MDMA, or ecstasy, tablets circulating the state, with a higher dose than usually expected. The tablets are purple shield-shaped (see below from their press release).Dr Hester Wilson, a chief addiction medicine specialist, said consuming high doses of MDMA has been linked to cases of serious illness and death in NSW:
MDMA can cause severe agitation, raised body temperature, seizures or fits, irregular heart rhythm and death. Other risks include taking MDMA in combination with other stimulants, such as amphetamines or cocaine.
The amount of MDMA in a tablet or capsule can vary significantly, even within the same batch. The health risks from MDMA are greatly increased if high amounts (including multiple doses) are consumed over a short period.
Wilson also said hot environments, such as music festivals, increase the risk of harm from MDMA, encouraging people to take a break from dancing, seek shade and drink water.ShareUpdated at 07.06 CESTKey eventsShow key events onlyPlease turn on JavaScript to use this featureEmily WindMany thanks for joining me on the blog today, Cait Kelly will be here to guide you through the rest of today’s rolling coverage. See you tomorrow morning.ShareNSW Health warns of high-dose MDMA tablets circulating stateA purple shield-shaped MDMA tablet that NSW Health says is representative of tablets in circulation with a higher dose of ecstasy than advertised. Photograph: NSW HealthNSW Health has issued a warning about high-dose MDMA, or ecstasy, tablets circulating the state, with a higher dose than usually expected. The tablets are purple shield-shaped (see below from their press release).Dr Hester Wilson, a chief addiction medicine specialist, said consuming high doses of MDMA has been linked to cases of serious illness and death in NSW:
MDMA can cause severe agitation, raised body temperature, seizures or fits, irregular heart rhythm and death. Other risks include taking MDMA in combination with other stimulants, such as amphetamines or cocaine.
The amount of MDMA in a tablet or capsule can vary significantly, even within the same batch. The health risks from MDMA are greatly increased if high amounts (including multiple doses) are consumed over a short period.
Wilson also said hot environments, such as music festivals, increase the risk of harm from MDMA, encouraging people to take a break from dancing, seek shade and drink water.ShareUpdated at 07.06 CESTFears spike about public sector workplace corruptionAlmost one in three Victorian public sector employees think corruption is a problem in their workplace, according to the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission’s latest perceptions of corruption survey.As AAP reports, the survey was released today and collected more than 9,000 responses from Victorians aged 16 and older – including public sector workers, local government employees, Victoria police members and business suppliers. Roughly nine out of 10 agreed corruption happens in Victoria, the report said.
On average, a 19-percentage point gap exists between those agreeing corruption happens versus [those that] perceive that corruption is a problem, suggesting a widespread tolerance for certain types of corruption behaviours.
Across the groups, there has tended to be an increase since 2022 in the proportion viewing corruption to be a problem in Victoria.
ShareUpdated at 07.02 CESTHere’s the full story from Mostafa Rachwani, on news Sydney police told organisers of a pro-Palestine rally this weekend they had safety concerns over the expected crowd size and potential hazards at Town Hall – including “the recent addition of over a dozen planter boxes”.ShareLegal activists say right to protest ‘must be protected’The Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) is calling on the NSW police commissioner to drop supreme court applications attempting to prevent two pro-Palestine rallies from going ahead on 6 and 7 October.In a statement, the HRLC said that any approach that “demonises and punishes thousands of people for the actions of a few is disproportionate and a breach of human rights”.David Mejia-Canales, a senior lawyer at the HRLC, said the right to protest is “fundamental to our democracy and must be protected.”
While NSW police may seek to restrict or ban the protest, they must be able to show that these actions are both necessary and proportionate, in line with international human rights and constitutional standards.
Overly broad restrictions on our right to get together peacefully must not be NSW police’s first response; instead, authorities must focus on facilitating these rights and freedoms.
Mejia-Canales said that blanket bans on protests are “disproportionate” and that restricting and prohibiting protests should “only ever be a measure of last resort.”
NSW police must prioritise less intrusive measures and consider allowing the protest to go ahead. If there is poor behaviour by individuals, then this should be dealt with accordingly while allowing everyone else to peacefully protest.
ShareUpdated at 06.44 CESTThe Bureau of Meteorology has shared this satellite view of southwest WA, where a severe weather warning remains in place.A strong cold front will sweep the region today, with an associated deep low pressure system and trough to follow in its wake.Widespread damaging winds around 60-70km/h with peak gusts around 100km/h are forecast across the coastal fringe south of Jurien Bay from this evening.This system is expected to be windier than typical and unusual for this time of year, the Bureau said.The view from space showing a low pressure system to the southwest, rain band with the cold front stretching across the #SWLD, and a trough with thunderstorms for the interior and southeast. ⚠️Warnings have been issued for the southwest 🌬️🌊. Full details: https://t.co/NAfH5ADLoy pic.twitter.com/EnOkpKTYle— Bureau of Meteorology, Western Australia (@BOM_WA) October 2, 2024

ShareAussies unprepared for money shocks, according to surveyLess than a quarter of Australians are satisfied with their financial position, with younger generations increasingly relying on grandparents for support.As AAP reports, research conducted by investment group MLC found 70% of people said financial wellbeing was important to meeting life goals, but only 23% were happy with their money situation.MLC’s financial freedom report, which surveyed more than 2,500 people, found just 25% of respondents were prepared to handle unexpected financial challenges. Some 41% of respondents said they worried about their finances all the time or often.The findings also showed grandparents were playing a larger role in helping younger generations financially, with more than half saying they are assisting monetarily or plan to do so.The findings showed 60% of those in Gen Z received financial support from grandparents – along with 56% of millennials – when they reached adulthood. That compares with 20% of generation X and 6% of baby boomers.Those in generation X were the most likely to worry about cost-of-living issues, followed by generation Z, millennials and baby boomers.ShareUpdated at 06.03 CESTJonathan BarrettSPC to merge with Original Juice ownerCanned fruit giant SPC Global is planning to merge with the Original Juice Company (OJC) in a deal designed to create a large food conglomerate, with increased Australian manufacturing capability.The deal, which requires approval from OJC shareholders, also includes folding powdered milk products company Nature One Dairy into the new company, according to an ASX release issued today.The 100-year-old SPC, a major employer in Victoria’s Goulburn Valley, is the biggest company of the three and its chief executive, Robert Iervasi, will lead the merged entity.
With our market-leading packaged fruit, canned tomatoes and baked bean products, we are excited to expand with OJC both domestically and globally and see significant synergy potential in bringing the two producers together.
Best known for the aforementioned canned fruit and baked beans, SPC also produces ready-made meals. The ASX-listed OJC owns several juice brands, including Original Juice and The Juice Lab.OJC is chaired by the former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett, who will step down from his role after the transaction is finalised. The combined business is expected to generate more than $400m in annual revenue, OJC told shareholders.ShareUpdated at 05.54 CESTWoman charged for allegedly causing fires at cemetery chapel and shedsWestern Australian police have charged a 28-year-old woman for allegedly setting fire to items inside a chapel.It will be alleged the Mandurah woman forced entry into the Norfolk chapel at Karrakatta cemetery yesterday and set fire to items inside, with the resulting fire causing an estimated $1m damage to the chapel.Police will further allege the woman set fire to a shed at a cemetery in Parklands on 27 September, with the shed and its contents destroyed. Police allege the woman set another fire in a small shed at the same cemetery in Parklands on 30 September.The woman has been charged with one count of burglary and three counts of criminal damage by fire and is due to appear before the Perth magistrates court today.ShareUpdated at 05.44 CESTAnne Hollonds says systems outside of youth prisons ‘need to be doing their job’Back at the National Press Club, Anne Hollonds told a story about visiting what she thought was the best youth justice facility in the country, with 24 children.She didn’t say what state it was located in, but that she was “really impressed” and asked the principal what happens to the children when they leave? The principle said that was “a problem”, Hollonds said, explaining:
She said, ‘They go back to their community and they try to re-enrol back in the school, and often the school doesn’t want them.’ She said that to me. ‘The school does not want them.’ Or they start going back to school, but they’re not getting the one on one learning support they need.
These kids, they may have dropped out of school about the age of eight or nine. They have missed years and years of schooling. So she said ‘they drop out, and then they come back, and they come back, and they come back.’ …
And so it’s a failure … of the systems outside the prison. So even the state that I mentioned, that had the small therapeutic unit, they can’t fix all this on their own. They need the systems outside the prison to be doing their job, and that’s not happening.
National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAPShareUpdated at 05.34 CESTNSW Friends of Palestine write to police minister seeking compromise ahead of ralliesAmy RemeikisThe NSW Friends of Palestine group have written to the NSW police minister, Yasmin Catley, urging the government to help find a compromise with NSW police and allow this weekend’s planned pro-Palestinian protests to go ahead.As the Guardian’s Mostafa Rachwani reported this morning, NSW police plan on applying to the state’s supreme court to prevent the protests going ahead on the grounds of safety concerns, a move protesters say is an attack on the fundamental democratic right to protest.The Labor group are appealing to Catley to find a middle road.In a letter sent to the police minister, Labor members said “rank and file ALP branch members have demonstrated consistent support for the Palestinian people through branch and conference resolutions, fundraising for humanitarian aid, and through participation in the weekly rallies” and that Labor Friends of Palestine members “have participated in every Sydney rally for the last 51 weeks”.In a letter seen by Guardian Australia, Louisa Romanous wrote on behalf of the group:
Over that time, we have found the rallies to be peaceful and well-organised. We acknowledge that last Sunday’s rally had a different tone – born out of the shock and distress arising from Israel’s attacks on Lebanon. Members of the Australian-Lebanese community expressed their profound grief and pain in many different ways, with a very small number flying Hezbollah flags. Notwithstanding the heightened emotions, at no time did the rally feel unsafe or violent.
The NSW police announcement that they will seek to prohibit this week’s rally seems a disproportionate response to the actions we observed at the rally, and prohibiting a rally on such a key date is a profound attack on political expression and the right to protest.
The group said “Labor governments should protect peaceful protest as a critical feature of social democracy and progressive politics” and urged Catley to “intervene in this matter and work constructively with police, rally organisers and affected communities to facilitate an outcome that will allow a peaceful rally and march to occur as planned on Sunday 6th October in Sydney”.ShareUpdated at 05.36 CESTChildren’s commissioner says minister for children would improve coordinationThe children’s commissioner, Anne Hollands, has been taking questions following her speech at the National Press Club.She was asked about her call for a minister for children: why was it not sufficient to simply have the existing minister for youth?Hollonds noted the work the youth minister is doing, but said she wants to see a minister for children in cabinet as well:
Not because that person can fix it on their own, by the way, because having someone – it would make my life easier, I would have one minister to talk to, not fifty million – but at the moment there’s no coordination. That minister would ideally work with colleagues to ensure we get better coordination and work with the jurisdictions on these sorts of reforms we’re talking about.
ShareUpdated at 05.23 CESTPlanter boxes listed as safety concern ahead of pro-Palestine rally on SundayMostafa RachwaniA NSW police letter to organisers of a pro-Palestine rally planned for Sunday at Sydney’s Town Hall says the force has concerns for the safety of participants and the general public given the size of the expected crowd and hazards within the precinct including “the recent addition of over a dozen planter boxes” for spring.The force also notes the potential impact of the rally on other users of the Town Hall precinct including light rail commuters and attendees at the nearby St Andrews cathedral.The police letter to the organisers does not mention the potential presence of prohibited images such as the Hezbollah flag which was allegedly displayed at last Sunday’s protest in Sydney’s CBD.The NSW Greens justice spokesperson, Sue Higginson, said the move by NSW police to ban this weekend’s protests at Town Hall was “oppressive.”
It is a harsh and oppressive move by the NSW police force to attempt to prohibit the peaceful, uninterrupted weekly assembly where people have been expressing their collective grief and support of the Palestinian people suffering the most horrific genocide.
To learn that the reason for this undemocratic intolerance of the people’s right to protest is [partly] due to a few planter boxes on the street is cruel, callous and frankly dangerous.
After a meeting yesterday morning with organisers, NSW police said they were “not satisfied that the protest could proceed safely” and signalled they would apply to the NSW supreme court to have Sunday’s protest banned – along with another event scheduled for Monday.ShareJosh TaylorAnti-trans activist Kellie-Jay Keen says visa to Australia has not been grantedKellie-Jay Keen, aka Posie Parker, has ditched plans to appear at the conservative talkfest CPAC Australia in Brisbane this weekend after she said her visa to Australia had not been granted.The “gender-critical” activist from the UK, who made headlines in Australia last year when her rally outside the steps of parliament was gatecrashed by nazis, posted on X she was not flying to Australia in the morning due to a visa not being granted and she would instead be watching the live stream of the defamation trial brought by Liberal MP Moira Deeming against state Liberal leader John Pesutto over comments made about her attendance that rally.CPAC Australia also claimed on its website the talk had been “CANCELLED VISA REFUSED” [sic]. But it is understood the Department of Home Affairs was still considering the visa application from Parker and no refusal had been issued.CPAC Australia was approached for comment.The headline act for CPAC Australia will be former UK prime minister Liz Truss. Other speakers include Warren Mundine, Senator Alex Antic, Senator Bridget McKenzie, Senator Matt Canavan, the former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce and Senator Gerard Rennick.Kellie-Jay Keen. Photograph: James Ross/EPAShareUpdated at 05.24 CESTMore from Anne Hollonds’ national press club addressAnne Hollonds is calling for the government to appoint a cabinet minister for children and to establish a ministerial council for child wellbeing that reports to national cabinet.She said Australia ratified the convention on the rights of the child in 1990 but “unlike other countries, we have no legislation to underpin the responsibilities we have signed up to”:
There is currently noone held responsible, for example, when the conditions in detention are breaching international human rights conventions. And this was made clear at a recent inquest into the tragic death by suicide of young Cleveland Dodd.
Hollonds argued the concept that children have human rights is “not well understood” in Australia:
You never hear children’s rights talked about in question time, or on the news. But you’ll hear about workers’ rights, women’s rights, consumer rights, for example. The term children’s rights, well, it doesn’t really roll off the tongue, does it, in Australia. And that helps to explain why we continue to see breaches of human rights, and in child justice system. It’s getting worse, not better, and it has to stop.
ShareUpdated at 05.13 CESTCommissioner says some politicians told her: ‘there’s no votes in children’Circling back to the National Press Club, where the children’s commissioner, Anne Hollonds, has been speaking. She said that when she has raised issues of youth justice with members of Parliament, some have said “there’s no votes in children”:
The truth is while we may all be shocked in the moment when there’s a tragedy reported in the media – and there’s just about every week – these serious failures and systemic neglect of children do not seem to affect a party’s political fortunes at elections.
Despite the economic costs and the questionable morality of strategies contrary to the evidence, when I ask about lack of progress on reform, I’m told by some members of Parliament there’s no votes in children.
ShareUpdated at 05.23 CESTAttempts to stop pro-Palestine rallies in Sydney ‘deeply anti democractic’, Greens senator saysGreens senator David Shoebridge has labelled the move by NSW police to try to stop pro-Palestine rallies from taking place in Sydney as “deeply anti democratic”.In a post to X, Shoebridge said the protests have been held weekly for 51 weeks and have been “overwhelmingly peaceful,” with families and the community coming together to “mourn their loved ones and call for the end of violence.”
The organisers were in discussions with police on how to hold the protest and keep the community safe but then found out via the media that police were trying to block it! It’s a deeply anti-democratic move.
Greens senator David Shoebridge. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAPShareUpdated at 04.49 CESTChildren’s commissioner ‘shocked and distressed’ after visiting youth detention centresContinuing from our last post: Anne Hollonds said that what she saw during visits to the nation’s youth detention centres left her “shocked and distressed”.As AAP reports, she told the audience:
What was most chilling for me was to meet children who had no one, who were completely alone, who spoke of feeling shut out and shunned by society. These children were unable to tell me about any hopes or dreams or plans for the future. All they could see in their future was more of the same but in adult prison.
Barely literate, their lack of education or training gave them no prospects for a job, and they had no one to help them. The light had gone out of their eyes.
The children’s commissioner warned unless the nation started paying attention to the evidence, the community would be having the same conversation in a decade’s time, only with a lot more tragedies along the way.
Australia can be ‘smart on crime’ by acting on the evidence, dealing with the barriers to reform, and building safe communities where children can get the best start in life.
ShareUpdated at 04.42 CEST