His father, Mita Pauljevic, 67, said of the Premier’s vow: "Don’t stop the festival. This is normal for kids to get together. Get rid of the dealers. When these guys commit several murders, it’s mass murder. They should get life." In a response to his comments Ms Berejiklian said: "No parent should have to endure the heartbreak of losing a child to drugs. That is why I want to ensure dance music festivals in NSW are safe and fun for young people. "Unfortunately, with four deaths in five years the Defqon.1 event does not have a good track record and we are keeping all of our options open." On Sunday she had said: "We will do everything we can to shut this down. I don’t want to see this event happen again." Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video

Saturday’s event in Penrith resulted in the death of 23-year-old Joseph Pham from Edensor Park and a 21-year-old woman from Melbourne. Westmead Hospital confirmed on Monday that a 19-year-old man from Artarmon was in a "stable" condition. A 28-year-old woman at Nepean Hospital was also stable. Another man was at Liverpool Hospital in a "critical but stable" condition. There were also calls for a repeat of then premier Bob Carr’s 1999 landmark drug summit, largely prompted by the death of 15-year-old Anna Wood four years earlier. NSW shadow health minister Walt Secord said: "As for the Premier’s unilateral decision on the festival, we should pause, reflect and await the findings of the toxicology analysis by NSW Health and the investigation by NSW Police and the Coroner before the state government imposes a wide-ranging blanket ban." He added: "A Foley Labor government in 2019 will hold a bipartisan drug summit – patterned on the historic 1999 one – as drug use has changed significantly since then." He said that official NSW Labor policy did not support pill testing.

Paul Dillon of Drug and Alcohol Research and Training Australia said: "Ecstasy has been very weak for a long time, they can double drop or triple drop," he said. "When you are taking two or three at a time of something very strong, with an adulterant, that’s dangerous. "They believe MDMA is safe. You need 110 milligrams of MDMA to get an effect. We are seeing capsules with anything like 170 milligrams right up to 394 milligrams. It’s a complexity that young people are not going to think about when they are popping something to have a good time." Joseph Pham died after a suspected overdose at Defqon on Saturday. Mr Dillon also said shutting down events would not solve the problem. Four years ago, he said there would be five overdose deaths by Christmas. There were seven. In recent weeks he has told year 12 students there will be more. He declined to predict a figure. "To me it is a knee-jerk response. To clamp down and remove an event somehow thinking that’s going to solve the problem, the real risk is that it will just pop up somewhere else in a much more dangerous context. It’s a vote-winner," he said.

"Do we really want to go back to the days of the early ’90s with underground events held at warehouses with police raiding them and people doing more dangerous things. Obviously what we are doing currently is not working. We need to look at other options and pill testing should be in the mix, but we should be careful of thinking it will be a silver bullet because it won’t be." The nation’s peak medical body has backed calls for pill-testing trials in the wake of the deaths. Loading Australian Medical Association president Tony Bartone said law enforcement could not be the only approach to solving the illicit drug issue. Testing could do more than verify whether adulterants were in festival-goers’ pills, he said.

"It’s an opportunity to try and inform... about the dangerous consequences and try to get an opportunity to give them education and access to rehabilitation in terms of trying to reduce their drug dependency." He said his organisation was clear that "proper co-ordinated clinical trials" were needed to determine "if pill testing did have a role to play". Greens MP David Shoebridge also called for festivals to introduce pill testing, amnesty bins and other harm-minimisation measures. A pill-testing trial at "Groovin the Moo" in Canberra in April found some lethal ingredients in what many festival-goers believed to be party drugs. In an Australian first, a total of 85 substances were tested at the music festival over the weekend by Safety and Testing and Advisory Service at Festivals and Events (STA-SAFE), with many consumers surprised by what was revealed.

The tests revealed some "quite pure... high-quality" ecstasy, as well as cocaine and ketamine. 'You wouldn’t give it to your worst enemy' Battling to control his emotions, Mr Pauljevic, who was born in the former Yugoslavia, personified the fears of every parent with teenagers wanting to attend music festivals. "Why stop these young people enjoying themselves at these festivals? There is nothing wrong with that. I went to the first music festival in Australia, in Sunbury in Victoria," he said. Mr Pauljevic said friends had invited Nigel, who had a younger sister and older brother, to go to the festival. "He wasn’t interested. Three days before the festival, there were two carloads, one couldn’t make it with the car. Nigel had his nanna’s car so they begged him and, because he is kindhearted, he said yes and drove them there.