Health Minister Greg Hunt has slammed the idea that pill testing trials should be placed on the COAG agenda.

Independent Tasmanian MP Andrew Wilkie asked Mr Hunt about the issue during Question Time, urging the Government to reconsider its stance in light of Hobart City Council voting in support of pill testing at major events and festivals yesterday.

“Now we know pill testing saves lives and health experts agree a harm minimisation approach is the only sensible response to illicit drug use,” Mr Wilkie said.

Mr Wilkie was critical of the Tasmanian Government’s position on the issue, arguing it was “clinging to an ideological opposition to harm minimisation” and the Government should back the council’s position.

“Governments like Tasmania’s have shown they simply don’t understand the issue. So will you, as Health Minister, put the issue of pill testing on the COAG health council agenda?” he asked.

Mr Hunt’s response was emphatic — and certainly not what Mr Wilkie was hoping for.

“My answer is no,” he said.

“What he (Wilkie) has proposed is, I believe, a dangerous and unfounded course of action.”

The question comes as New South Wales conducts its own coronial inquest into six drug-related deaths at festivals.

Mr Hunt argued that even if illicit drugs were tested, they could still be fatal in their purest form.

“These are drugs which are illegal for a reason. They are drugs because they can kill. They are drugs because the nature of the response may not be known in an individual case,” he said.

“The entire nation is seeking to deal with some of the challenges of amphetamines and of opioids, the idea that we could be condoning, encouraging and supporting the expansion of their consumption is, to my mind, utterly unthinkable.”

Mr Hunt added that a person could be in danger even if they took what was deemed an “appropriate dose”.

“That is why these drugs are dangerous. That is why these drugs are illicit. And that is why we will not be adopting the approach which the member, I believe, foolishly and dangerously has advocated,” he said.

The Minister’s position is in opposition to the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP), which has previously written a letter to all state and territory governments in favour of pill testing trials. It argues the medical evidence supports trials.

The RACP’s chapter of addiction medicine president Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones has said the current evidence justifies the introduction of “carefully designed” pill testing trials.

“Ideally, we would all like young people and the wider public not to use drugs illicitly, however, the reality is that they do in large numbers and the moral message to abstain from taking drugs is not getting through,” Dr Lloyd-Jones said.

“The evidence to date shows that existing policies in place at festivals to discourage drug taking, including heavy police presence, sniffer dogs and searches, are not effective.

“These policies are failing our communities and our young people, leading to unnecessary deaths.”

The RACP is not the first body to back pill testing. The Australian Medical Association and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners also support the idea.