Equality Tasmania Wants Premier To Commit To Anti-Gay Conversion Practices Ban
Image: Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff (left) and Equality Tasmania's Rodney Croome.
LGBTQI advocacy group Equality Tasmania has sought assurances from Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff that his government is on track to bring in a law to ban anti-gay conversion practices in the state.
This comes after former Attorney-General Elise Archer resigned from Parliament. Archer was working on legislation to ban anti-gay conversion practices.
“We will write to the Premier and the acting Attorney-General asking for their assurance that the Government’s commitment to a conversion ban by the end of 2023 remains in place,” Equality Tasmania spokesperson, Rodney Croome, said in a statement.
“It has been a year and a half since the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute released its report calling for a conversion ban and the Premier committed to the reform.”
“Vulnerable LGBTIQA+ Tasmanians continue to be subject to the torture of conversion practices and the longer the State Government delays the more damage will be done.”
LGBTQI Law Reforms
According to Croome, Archer was working on other LGBTQI law reforms, including a law to expunge historical convictions under anti-gay laws and amendments to the state’s hate crime laws to include tougher penalties for hate crimes, including anti-LGBTQI hate.
In June 2023, Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff committed to bringing in a law to ban anti-gay conversion practices before the end of the term of his government in June 2025.
In August, the state’s Sentencing Advisory Council announced a review to examine whether “section 11B (Sentencing Act) could be expanded to consider whether the offence was motivated to any degree by religion, language, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, innate variations of sex characteristics, age, a particular physical disability or cognitive impairment, or a mental illness.”
The state government also announced it had drafted a new bill to amend the Expungement of Historical Offences Act 2017, which in addition to charges under anti-gay and anti-crossing dress laws, would also allow expungement of associated charges like resisting arrest.
