 Finally, it's my absolute delight to introduce to all of you Minister Rose Jackson. Rose Jackson is a Labour member of the New South Wales Legislative Council and Minister for Housing, Homelessness, Water, Mental Health, Youth and the North Coast. She will be busy. Rose is elected to the Legislative Council in May 2019, has been fighting for drug law reform, real action on climate change, criminalising wage theft and tackling homelessness and housing affordability. So welcome to the stage Rose. Thank you so much. I'd like to start by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land in which we meet and extend that acknowledgement and respect to any Aboriginal people who are joining us. I think it's important to do that not only as Bill explained as a sign of showing appropriate respect for good manners but also because as everyone here in this room knows our broken drug laws continue to have a disproportionately negative effect on Aboriginal people and it's something that certainly motivates me and I know motivates many of you to continue the work that we need to do. I'd also like to acknowledge the leadership and the lives saved because of the work of all of the activists in this room and harm reduction international. It's certainly a little bit of Aussie pride that we have you Naomi, one of us leading harm reduction international and all of the work of the different organisations in this room is acknowledged. What you do is really challenging. The policy framework that political leaders all around the world put you in mean that you cannot deliver the services that you know the people that you are working with need and that is really challenging and frustrating every day and I acknowledge that and thank you for continuing to do that work in that very difficult environment. I also want to acknowledge the people here who have lived experience of drug use who are drug users and their families as has been acknowledged your voices are incredibly important as a political leader I often think about what is it that makes change? What is it that causes us to do things differently and better and yes the evidence is so important and the data and the statistics are so important and we need to share those but it is actually the stories that really change minds. It's the stories that persuade people to look at things differently so sharing your stories and the stories of your loved ones is the thing that is going to take us from where we are right now to the better place that we need to be. Thank you for coming. New South Wales which is the state that I'm from and to give a little bit of context New South Wales is the largest state in Australia we have a population of around eight million people our capital city is Sydney and because the theme of the conference is strength and solidarity I will avoid all of the lame potshots about which is the best city in Australia just forget that but that's for context what New South Wales is we have been we have been a global leader in drug law reform before in 1999 our state under the car Labor government held a groundbreaking drug summit in the chambers of New South Wales Parliament this is Australia's oldest parliamentary chambers and the benches were full of drug users of their families of health experts of policy leaders of police of community activists they all gathered for five full days in the New South Wales Parliament to have a comprehensive conversation about how we can do drug policy better and it wasn't just a groundbreaking and deeply moving conversation although it was those things it was most importantly a catalyst for action the 1999 drug summit had numerous recommendations for profound policy changes but probably the most significant was the establishment of our medically supervised injecting centre in Inner Sydney this facility over the last 20 years has saved lives in fact it has never had a fatality on site and I think Dr Mary Ann Johnsey from NSIC is either here or is coming and if you want to talk about how you can establish a medically supervised injecting centre in your jurisdiction and the work that this woman has done to embed this facility into our community in Sydney find her she's amazing it not only does it not only does all those thank you the medically supervised injecting centre also creates a space for conversations about how lives can change to build trust and relationship the the establishment of the facility was hard fought and I acknowledge all of those that were involved in that campaign but MSIC is a sign of our success and our failure our success in that the medically supervised injecting centre as a harm minimization facility in Sydney clearly works it has a proven record of success and demonstrates we're capable of doing good work but it is a failure in that despite working successfully for over 20 years despite the clear evidence it has created for policymakers that we can do things better progress has stalled we were not able to follow this big step with another and we have wasted over a decade in New South Wales ACT not only speaks ahead of New South Wales today it is clearly ahead of New South Wales when it comes to how we can do drug policy better but New South Wales is ready to lead again we want to get our state back on track in exploring evidence-based policies that recognize problematic drug use is best managed as a health issue not a criminal justice one and that non problematic drug use is best managed as a social and community conversation we want to have that broad conversation about how how we decide what types of behaviours are allowed in our community what are the consequences of those decisions and if some of those consequences are harmful how can that be managed so leadership looks like being prepared to have that conversation and that's why the newly elected New South Wales government will be holding another drug summit to acknowledge that the work that we have done in New South Wales has not been enough now for everyone in this room you know that the course of action seems clear you understand the evidence space has been established in New South Wales because of the decade of inaction we need to reconnect those stories and that evidence space with the community and broadly with members of parliament that connection has failed the purpose of the drug summit is to provide an opportunity for another deep conversation about how far we have fallen behind and the work that we need to do urgently to catch up it is about having a comprehensive challenging and confronting conversation it will be confronting we know that there will be stories told about the harm that our current drug laws are doing as the minister for homelessness i know that the current drug law legal regime in New South Wales is a direct contributor to homelessness our current laws are ruining families they are making people do hurtful things to themselves and others i'm not interested in making excuses i am interested in making things better so the principles are the same but after 20 years the context has changed substantially we are keen to draw on the new evidence space that has been established because of all of your work and the work that you're going to do over the next three days i'm very proud that there are representatives of New South Wales health here who will be participating in and leading conversations the political context has also changed i want to call out the partisan nature of the drug law reform debate in my state in a way that has held us back this should not be a left v right or liberal v conservative question it is clear that the current regime has failed and all political leaders need to sign up to an evidence space to move beyond this in doing that and despite the fact that the you know i've just come off an election campaign so i'm still very much in partisan frame of mind i want to it's not just about talking that talk i want to explicitly and deliberately credit the former conservative new south wales government for the small steps that they were prepared to make they invested 300 million dollars in treatment services in our state good on them for doing that that is an important investment and i want to thank the people particularly from the fair treatment campaign run in new south wales who established the basis for that investment it is not acceptable that when in the long and difficult journey of problematic drug use you would put your hand up for help and there is no one there to offer it that is what is happening in new south wales currently and we need to invest in the treatment services to fix that people like shantel stick in my mind she is a young single mother from dubbo which is a city in our central west she wanted help to be the best mother she could be for her child she put her hand up the only treatment that was available for her was 400 kilometers away and she doesn't have a car that is unacceptable and we need to invest in treatment services so that people who want it can get it the new south the former new south wales government also moved to establishing an infringement notice for minor drug use and we look forward to the advice from the chief medical officer and the commissioner for police on a path forward of that i do those things deliberately because i want drug law reform to be bipartisan i want it to be evidence-based i want it to be founded on a shared understanding of how we can do things better drug users should not be a political football an example of where we have not done so well in new south wales is the proposal of the new south wales government my government to trial pill testing at music festivals we have heard that the evidence base for drug checking is clear this reform is supported by medical experts the industry and perhaps most importantly the families of the young people who have tragically died because our current drug law laws are not working so i'm calling on politicians from across the spectrum to get behind the idea that new south wales would join the nationwide movement to establish drug checking at our music festivals i know it is more complex than that i know we have to have a conversation about how policing works about how strip searching works about how sniff the dogs are used but this is an important first step that we can take to establish the idea that people who go to music festivals in new south wales are able to access the same drug checking that they can in the ACT and soon in other jurisdictions like Queensland so our political leadership has a lot of work to do i accept that and over the next few days you do too so good luck and thank you for your participation this is the big significant frontier of policy reform over the next few years you've already achieved so much have so much to be proud of new south wales stands ready to be a partner in that journey i know that change seems hard and that entrenched ways seem difficult to amend but as we've heard look at the example of covid we listened to the experts we changed the ways we had always done things sometimes that was hard some of those changes are temporary but some will be permanent i know that the experts have something to tell us about how we can do better on our drug laws and new south wales stands ready to listen thank you thank you so much minister jackson so because we don't provide sunlight some glasses for the spotlight i invite you to maybe take a more comfortable seat down the down the front of the second half of the awards you could join me here