Days Like This crowdfunding to initiate court action against NSW Government

Sydney festival Days Like This has started a crowd-funding campaign to mount a legal challenge against the NSW Government’s High Risk list

The festival’s owner Division Agency has launched a GoFundMe page.

With a target of $40,000, there were over 700 shares within the first hour of the page going live and is currently sitting at $13,623 in donations.

The legal battle sees Division Agency and organisers from Novel, Lost Paradise and Finely Tuned join forces.

There were no incidents at Days Like This when it staged on the weekend (Saturday, March 9) at Victoria Park in Camperdown.

But the negative publicity around the High Risk list clearly affected the event.

Division Agency says tickets sales were down by almost 50% from 2018.

“The resources that needed to be implemented were excessive for an event that has never experienced a major incident during its three years of operation,” operator Jason Ayoubi said.

“As a team, we have worked tirelessly and will not tolerate the NSW government destroying an industry we all love so much. The damage that has been done to our brands, reputations and the industry is irreversible.

“There is a real threat that many of these festivals will no longer operate.”

For months leading into the event, Division Agency officials held regular meetings with all stakeholders (including NSW Police, City of Sydney Council, NSW Health Dep, NSW Liquor and Gaming, EMS Emergency Medical Service, NSW Ambulance, ISEC Security) and work in partnership to ensure a successful event.

“The number of patrons in attendance did not warrant the heavy police presence, which was found to be intimidating and, in some cases harassing.

“The police focus should be on harm minimisation and instead their current enforcement operational procedures that; discourages patrons from attending, encourage patrons that are going to take illicit substances to preload before arriving at events or to ingest drugs when confronted by police or bring in drugs that are undetectable such as GHB which can cause more harm.

“In our expert opinion, these policing procedures actually cause more harm than what they are trying to fix.”

Division Agency made its point by supplying a list of the number of emergency personnel on-site.

•    User Pays Police

–    25 x Police officers

–    Drug operations police x 35

–    Undercover x 25

–    Additional police responses (including the Riot Squad)

100 police in total

Ratio of 1 police member for every 60 patrons

Victoria and Queensland have police ratios of 1:1000

•    ISEC Security

–    81 Security Guards in total

–    1 x National Security Manager

–    1 x Security Manager

–    4 x Security Supervisors

–    77 x Security Guards

•    EMS Medical Staff

–    16 EMS Medical staff in total

–    1 x Doctor

–    1 x Forward Commander

–    2 x Registered Nurse

–    4 x Paramedic

–    4 x EMT

–    2 x EOC/ Comms

•    NSW Ambulance

–    1 x Forward Commander

–    2 x Ambulance with Crew

•    NSW Health Department

–    1 x Retrieval Specialist (called FACEM – Fellow of the Australian College of       Emergency Medicine)

–     1 x Retrieval Specialist (Consultant)

–     1 x Retrieval Team (2 x Emergency Specialists, 4 x Nurses)

•    Dancewize Staff

–     21 DanceWize staff in total

–    1 x On-site Coordinator

–    2 x Shift Leaders

Event statistics:

– 0 transportations (1 in total for the past 3 years)

– 26 x Presentations

– All presentations were treated on site and patrons returned to the festival.

Police Stats

– 100 x Detections

– 50% Positive

Security Stats

– 18 x Refusals

– 23 x Removals