The Greens have tabled their long-promised bill to ban conversion practices in Tasmania, putting the issue before a Liberal government that is yet to say how it will vote.
Greens leader Rosalie Woodruff said the bill was the result of years of work with legal experts, advocates and survivors.
“We understand that Tasmania is one of the last places in Australia still to ban conversion practices. We don’t want to be the last,” she said.
The bill would make it a criminal offence to carry out conversion practices and create a conversion practices commissioner to oversee prevention and education.
Conversion practices are attempts to change, suppress or eradicate a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
They remain legal in Tasmania, despite bans already passing in Victoria, the ACT, New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia.
Woodruff said the Greens had refined the bill after six weeks of public consultation and discussions with victim-survivors, legal bodies, faith-based organisations, health groups and MPs.
The bill follows criticism from Deputy Premier Guy Barnett, who described an earlier draft in a letter to Women Speak Tasmania as “amongst the most extreme of its type in Australia”.
Barnett argued in the letter that the draft risked criminalising “certain conversations between a parent and their child and conversions within families”.
Premier Jeremy Rockliff has repeatedly said he supports a ban but wants any legislation to be “balanced”.
He has also said Liberal MPs who want a conscience vote will be allowed one.
Woodruff said she was hopeful the bill would attract support across the chamber.
Equality Tasmania’s Rodney Croome, who helped develop the bill, said the reform targeted “treatments that don’t work for a condition that doesn’t exist”.
“I believe the bill is also the most effective in Australia, because it combines the best of the recommendations from the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute, the best of laws in other states and the suggestions made during the community consultation,” he said.
“I urge Tasmanian politicians to seriously consider this bill and to look first and foremost to the harm that has been suffered by conversion survivors in Tasmania and to listen to those survivors and their stories.”
Labor and several crossbenchers have indicated support for the bill, meaning it could pass without government backing.
Woodruff said she hoped it would be debated in parliament this year.
