 I'm so proud to have partnered with Harm Reduction Victoria on this conference. It means an enormous amount to us that, well, it's the first time Harm Reduction International has ever had four conference partners, and particularly with two of them being community led peer-based organisations, ABLE and Harm Reduction Vic. It feels like it's really been a conference driven by the leadership that we respect most. It kind of goes back to our conference theme of strength and solidarity. So I imagine most of you don't need to be introduced to Seonni Crawford, the CEO of Harm Reduction Victoria. Seonni's been working in Harm Reduction community-based organisations, leading them for a number of years across hepatitis, prevention, testing and treatment for marginalised populations, widely respected commentator. I saw him respond to the mental health challenges and the mental health work in Victoria over the past six months. You know, he is the leader you need when the challenges are there, so it brings me great pleasure to welcome Seonni to the mic. Thank you. It's a bit big following. My ex-prime minister. First of all, I'd like to also, I'd like to thank Uncle Bill for the welcome to country and acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands that we are meeting on today, the Waurang people of the Kulin Nation. I'm a visitor to this country as I just implied, and I'd like to thank him for the welcome today and also acknowledge that this land was stolen and has never been seated. Thank you Naomi. I'd also like to acknowledge and welcome to this conference people who use drugs and those with lived and living experience who give populations of people, people who give the movement that is harm reduction, so much of its strength. I'll say it now because, you know, others have said it and will say it all the way through this conference, but the war on drugs and prohibition and criminalisation has killed too many people and we can't rest until it ends. I'm sure everyone gathered here today agrees with this, so with that in mind, I'd really like to welcome all of you, all delegates to the conference and in particular, as I said, the people, the communities of people who use drugs who have travelled from near and far to share this time with us. I myself am proud to be part of the Victorian organisation of people who use drugs, Harm Relation Victoria. We're one of a number of national, we're one of a national network of organisations, of like organisations across the country with Aval as our peak, which is one of the conference partners as well, and Input as our global peak. At this point in time, knowing that there are so many people from the community here, I want you all to know that Harm Relation Victoria and our partners are here to help. I'd like also to let you know that at our stall, looking out for us at our stall, it's completely unmissable, thanks to the amazing work of our team in the stall area, thank you very much, guys. But I'd also really, really like to emphasise that while you look out for our staff, we look out for the Harm Relation Outreach volunteers that are here. Also, I'd like to emphasise that people look after each other across the next few days and don't be afraid to reach out for support around whether or not it's Harm Relation Equipment, Naloxone, anything that might assist you to be safe. Because we've been looking forward to hosting this conference since 2019, a global pandemic interrupted plans for it in 2021. And in the meantime, this city became famous, as we've heard, for being the longest lockdown city in the world. And for 262 days, we had 8pm, we had to be inside our house by 8pm and were allowed outside for one hour a day outside of that. While this might have meant that we avoided the huge death tolls that I'm sure many, many of the people in this audience have seen in their home countries, it did have direct and long lasting impacts on people who use drugs and those who did not have a home to be locked into. And we're therefore already the most visible to law enforcement. And while we all want to look forward, I think it's right to acknowledge this reality has not disappeared completely just because we wanted to. But it is 2023 now and the conference has made it here at last. For the past few years, sorry, past few weeks and months, it's felt like our entire organisation has been focused on this opportunity. Now our guests and friends have arrived from around the world. We're really excited to get into the program, befriend new people and welcome back old friends. I'd like to thank at this point again, HRVEC, for all of their work leading into this conference. HRI has given us the local partner organisation a significant time in the program to develop a range of sessions that focus on priorities that we, part of the local affected community, identified. I'd like to thank HRI for this and also just flag a couple of things in the program. Two out of many fantastic sessions to look out for include Australian drug policy in human rights tomorrow. This will be a really important opportunity for us to acknowledge Veronica Nelson and hear from Aboriginal expertise and others about a coroner's court case that decided opioid withdrawal and stigma against people who use drugs were causal and contributing factors to the death and death and custody of a loved member of our community. We're also glad to let you know about a process to develop a conference declaration that we fly us around the conference and our store for more information and information in the program about a workshop. Please get involved in that. It'd be really meaningful for us. We're really excited about all of these opportunities that the conference offers us and we want to be optimistic, but we know that one conference can't solve everything. We do hope that part of the legacy of this conference is that decision makers come to better understand what harm reduction is and is not and why it's so important. We hope that they can see, for example, that far from being radical drug consumption rooms or safe injecting rooms are relatively common elsewhere in the world and can coexist along the broader community, alongside the broader community if implementations done well and affected communities are properly involved. In Victoria, we sort of we like to think that we are a progressive jurisdiction and it's true that we have, for example, a branch of lived experience in the State Department of Health. Our organisation, Harm Reduction Victoria, is funded to provide a range of innovative, peer-lead harm reduction activities. We have naloxone, freely available across the state through chemists and the needle and syringe programs soon, anyway, supposedly. And the state, the government has accepted that people who lived and living experience should lead on the future of mental health service delivery. On the other hand, our opioid assisted treatment systems in crisis and it's genuinely often easier to find a drug dealer than a methadone prescriber in this state. We're still being put in jail for drug use despite our politicians claiming that dependence should be treated like a health issue and our most senior politician has ruled out the harm reduction response of drug checking, despite the fact that our people continue to die from preventable overdoses. Indeed. It often feels like here in Victoria and Australia, generally that we take one step forward and one step backwards in relation to harm reduction and for us in the community, the most important steps that have not even yet been taken and are often actively denied us. Helen spoke about a number of those steps, including things like safe supply, community-regulated supply and a regulator market for drugs. For all of these reasons and more, we welcome the harm reduction international conference to our town and I welcome all of all the activists and delegates. I know that as always, hearing from and speaking to our comrades from around the world will refill our supplies of optimism and confidence and help prepare ourselves for the battles yet to come. Welcome. Thank you so much, Sionni. Drawing on Sionni's point of care, I'd just like to let everybody know we've got the well-being services for the conference located in Organiser Office 201 on the second floor next to the Dancewise tent. It's so, so important to us that everybody has access to the health services they need broadly, but also at the conference. So please look after each other. We know drug use happens everywhere, including at conferences, so really encourage people not to use a loan. Also, a huge shout out and thank you to Remedy Alliance for the people who are doing an incredible job making the locksome more available in the US and also here with us at our conference. So thank you to Eliza.