Equality Tasmania have again slammed a “useless” bill aimed at banning LGBTQIA+ conversion therapy practices that was unveiled by the State Government this week.
The advocates doubled down on their claim that the bill is riddled with “loopholes” that could allow conversion practices to continue under the guise of “support” or “guidance” on Thursday and called for it to be repealed.
The Government has included what they describe as “several significant exclusions” that would permit “clinically appropriate” practices by health service providers and “providing support or understanding to another person” to continue in the current draft of the bill.
“After in-depth consideration of the bill and discussions with survivor advocates, it’s clear this bill is irredeemable and should be scrapped,” Equality Tasmania’s Rodney Croome said.
“This is the kind of bill an anti-LGBTIQA+ group like the Australian Christian Lobby would draft.”
“This bill is a far cry from the promise Premier Jeremy Rockliff made to implement the gold-standard recommendations of the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute.”
He said the group will use the consultation period to urge the state government to “scrap this bill, listen to the experts and the survivors and draft something that will do the job”.
“It is really disappointing that after so much heart-felt advocacy by survivors, so much ground-breaking research and so many well-developed recommendations from the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute, the Government has come up with such useless legislation.”
Attorney General and Minister for Justice Guy Barnett on Wednesday said the reform was “not intended” to limit people’s ability to have “open discussions as part of policy debates and within families, faith communities and clinical settings”.
“The Tasmania Government supports freedom of religion and the right for all people to express their personal faith, beliefs and values, including for the purposes of making contributions to public policy debates,” he said.
“The Government believes it is vitally important to get this important legislation right and in order to do that we need to give Tasmanians an opportunity to participate in consultation on the draft legislation.”
