 So it's my great pleasure to introduce Rachel Stevens-Smith, who is the Minister for Health, Families and Community Services and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs in the Australian Capital Territory. Minister Steven Smith was first elected to the ACT Legislative Assembly as a member for Kurojong in 2016 after a 20-year career in public policy across federal and ACT governments and non-governmental organisations. In her time as Health Minister, Rachel has been responsible for implementing nation-leading drug and alcohol reform. This includes decriminalising personal possession of small amounts of illicit drugs, opening Australia's first fixed-site drug-checking service and making record investments in the alcohol, tobacco and other drug sector. Welcome, Rachel. Thank you, Naomi. I want to start by acknowledging that we meet on the unceded lands of the Bannerong Boon Wurrung and Wurandjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the Eastern Kulin Nation. I'm thanking Uncle Bill for his wonderful welcome to country and encouraging everyone to listen to hear and this year, if you're Australian, to take the opportunity to give a new voice to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in this country. I want to acknowledge all of the many eminent people, committed professionals and activists in the room. It's really an incredible honour to be here among so many national and international leaders, including those who are bringing their valuable lived experience to inform the vital work of harm reduction. It's a real pleasure to be here to be able to shine a light on the drug policy reforms we've achieved in the Australian Capital Territory or the ACT. I feel I should for international visitors explain that the ACT is, as the name suggests, home of Australia's capital city, Canberra, and of our national parliament and institutions. We're a self-governing territory with a single level of government that covers both state and local responsibilities. So perhaps you could think of the ACT government as slightly similar to the Washington DC Council if you're familiar with that, although we have somewhat fairer representation in our national parliament. The ACT's population is around 460,000 and we're an island within New South Wales and it's unusual for the ACT to speak ahead of New South Wales. We also serve as a hub for employment and services from people in the surrounding region and it does create a range of cross-border issues that we need to manage. But over the last few years the ACT has developed a number of evidence-based policies in partnership with experts, people with lived experience, and our local alcohol, tobacco and other drug sector. Canberra is a very progressive city with a highly educated population and a disproportionate number of policy wonks. This contributes to levels of public support for decriminalisation and harm reduction measures being the highest in the country. And as just one example, the recent Australian survey of social attitudes found that 96% of Canberrans support the availability of pill testing services at music festivals and appropriate health settings. Now it wasn't like that before we trialled pill testing in 2018 and 19, we demonstrated it as well as building on an existing base of community support. So not only do we know that drug checking is good harm reduction and health policy and that's been detailed by independent evaluations from the Australian National University of our music festival pilots and an interim evaluation of our new static site pilot. But our constituents see the sense in it and they recognise that it can save lives. Now I'm not going to talk very much about the pill testing facilities but there are a great team here from pill testing Australia representing the ACT and if you want to hear about it they will be here and please go and talk to them about the experience. But taking a harm reduction approach is not something new in the ACT. In 1992 the ACT was the second Australian jurisdiction to introduce police diversion for cannabis possession through a modest on the spot fine. A further police diversion program was introduced in 2001 to allow people found with any illicit drug to instead be diverted to an assessment and harm reduction session. And in 2012 the ACT became the first Australian jurisdiction to introduce a take home naloxone program both for people who use drugs and for other members of the community. The program is still run today by Canberra's peer drug user organisation the Canberra Alliance for Harm Minimisation and Advocacy or CARMA a vital partner for the ACT government which continues to provide emergency response training and subsidised naloxone access and received additional funding in 2020 to expand that access. I'm pleased to say that take home naloxone is also growing across Australia under the national take home naloxone program. And in recent years the ACT government has been working to introduce other harm reduction measures to strengthen health based responses and to continue to reduce the stigma that Helen spoke so eloquently about the impact of. In 2020 legislation was implemented to entirely remove penalties for adults possessing up to 50 grams of dried cannabis or growing up to two plants at home for individual sales or for individual use rather or for household. And of course it was predicted that the sky would fall in but it didn't. In the first month after the legislation came into effect in February 2020 wastewater monitoring showed no change in cannabis use. And it's difficult to interpret the changes in cannabis use after this time because the COVID-19 pandemic had really noticeable impacts on drug use patterns which were likely related to changing patterns of supply and use. However we do know that cannabis related emergency department attendances and hospital admissions appear to be completely unchanged in the three years since the reforms came in compared to the three years before they were implemented again building the evidence base for Australia. But we've now taken a step further and this is what I want to focus my remaining time on. Later this year new ACT laws will come into effect reducing penalties for possessing nine other illicit drugs including heroin, methamphetamine, MDMA, LSD and psilocybin. This means a person found in possession of small amounts of these commonly used illicit drugs can be cautioned, referred to an assessment harm reduction session or receive a simple drug offence notice. If a person receives a simple drug offence notice they'll be able to choose whether to pay a fine of $100 or attend an assessment and harm reduction session and they can also be referred to treatment on a voluntary basis. The maximum penalties at court for those small amount possession offences will be greatly reduced. Instead of facing a maximum penalty of two years in prison and or a fine of $8,000 the maximum small amount penalty will be $160. Not really worth prosecuting. Maximum prison sentences for possession of amounts between the small amount threshold and the threshold where an assumption of trafficking is made have also been substantially reduced under the legislation. And the aim of these reforms of course is to reduce the chances that people become unnecessarily involved in the criminal justice system for drug possession. This is particularly important for young people although I'd note the changes don't apply to people under the age of 18. For First Nations people and for people who are otherwise marginalised in our communities and that's why we took the very clear decision to include heroin and methamphetamine despite those being the drugs that people most opposed being decriminalised. These reforms also aimed to increase access to health services by reducing stigma and fear or repercussions among people who use drugs. ACT health officials have been working very closely with ACT policing to implement this reform as well as other areas of government and our non-government partners to ensure a smooth implementation over the 12 month implementation period which builds on a lot of consultation prior to the passage of the legislation last October. One of the important lessons from the cannabis decriminalisation we found was the need to communicate clearly what the changes to the law will mean as well as what they will not mean which can be equally important. We also need to use this window of opportunity to publicise harm reduction and treatment services. Which brings me to how we got here and the political lessons learned which I was keen to share with you. First it's really important to acknowledge that this legislation was not a government bill. Like the full decriminalisation of cannabis it was introduced by my colleague ACT Labor Backbencher Michael Pedersen. Like me Michael was first elected to the Assembly in 2016 and he did not run for office with any intention of being a champion for drug law reform. Instead his constituent and his committee work brought him into contact with the incredible advocates from family and friends for drug law reform in the ACT and he started looking into the evidence. He got to know stakeholders and took the time to understand the range of perspectives including those of police. He worked with these groups to develop a position bringing his Labor caucus colleagues along to make an election commitment in 2020 that we would consider the introduction of a simple drug offence notice. Then he developed an introduced legislation that could be thoroughly considered by the Parliament through a committee process, enabling the government to examine the bill and respond to feedback through a series of agreed amendments. While this took time it was in fact undoubtedly a quicker process than if the government itself had tried to develop legislation. And it enabled substantial community consultation and engagement where government officials were working to improve something that was already on the table rather than trying to defend something that they had developed. Ultimately no one got everything they wanted and that's probably a sign of a well balanced policy response in which the community can have confidence. I am certainly confident that the sky will not fall in come October. ACT police will be appropriately trained and supported through implementation and people who use drugs will benefit as will the wider community. In many ways our changes are incremental change but the fact that they are being talked about here today demonstrates that they are in fact nation leading. And it is how large shifts in policy in Australia are delivered. We are not by nation revolutionary we are incremental but we can deliver change that way. So I want to take the opportunity to thank all those who work through this complex policy process particularly the ACT public seventh some of whom are here today, the families whose advocacy is really paying off. And just in closing I want to acknowledge the vital role that the ACT drug and alcohol workforce, peer workers and a harm reduction approach played during COVID-19. In particular the pandemic showed the great value of peer workers and trusted services across our community. Karma used its contacts and access into public housing to deliver key supplies, driving out to deliver sterile injecting equipment, food and other practical support to people who were not able to leave their homes. They also helped to build trust and bridge the divide between community members and a range of government supports in which they may not otherwise have had a lot of trust. Directions health services provided deliveries of opioid maintenance treatment to people in isolation or quarantine after rapid work to develop new protocols for unsupervised dosing. And directions also provided outreach health services including vaccinations while the youth drug and alcohol service Ted Noff's foundation facilitated access to vaccinations for young people. In short our non-government services went above and beyond and I know that this will not only have been in Canberra. Many of you here today will have done similarly valuable work and I thought it was really key to acknowledge that, give yourselves a round of applause. So there'll be a range of speakers during the conference showcasing the excellent work of our non-government sector partners in the ACT. And we know that we still have a long way to go as well as a lot to share and a lot to learn which is why we have representatives from our health directorate and non-government partners here. So finally a plug for Canberra it's an excellent place to visit particularly for anyone who wants to come and work with internationally recognized research institutions and local innovative grassroots organizations. So I'd encourage you to seek out and find some of them here at this conference. Thank you so much for having me here today. I hope you all have an enjoyable and productive few days together. Thank you so much Minister Stephen Smith.