State that decriminalised homosexual acts in 1997 announces legislation to wipe historical convictions, the fifth Australian state to do so

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Men with convictions for homosexual acts in Tasmania will have their records expunged and will receive a formal apology, the state government has announced.

Tasmania was the last Australian jurisdiction to decriminalise homosexuality in 1997, and is the fifth to announce it will legislate to wipe related historical convictions.

The legislation will allow men to apply for expungement of convictions they received under three previous laws criminalising “sexual intercourse against the order of nature”, “consensual sexual intercourse between males”, and “indecent practices between males”.

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“The legislation will ensure that any individual prosecuted under these offences will no longer suffer distress or be disadvantaged by a criminal record in relation to travel, employment, and volunteering,” said a statement from Vanessa Goodwin, the Tasmanian attorney general.

As in other states, it is not known how many convictions were made in the decades before 1997. Rodney Croome, spokesman for the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group, told Guardian Australia that historians believed there was a “particularly large” number in Tasmania, considering its small population.

“Men I’ve spoken to who were convicted, were clearly traumatised by what happened, and all the men I’ve spoken to left Tasmania immediately,” Croome said.

“They live in Sydney and Melbourne and have never been back. It was not only the trauma and shame associated with the arrest and conviction and the exposure, but also subsequently with being cut off from the families and communities they’ve grown up in.”

He noted that while the penalty before decriminalisation was a fine, routinely imposed up until the 1980s, it used to be a heavy jail sentence, and many convicted men took their own life.

Croome said there were still two issues remaining within Tasmania’s proposed legislation. Cross-dressing, which was a criminal act until 2001, is not specifically covered, but Croome hopes the attorney general will immediately use accompanying scheduling provisions to include it.

The government has also said applications for expungement will be ruled on by the secretary of the Department of Justice, as they are in New South Wales.

That decision goes against a recommendation by the anti-discrimination commissioner, Robin Banks, whose report, “Treatment of historic records for consensual homosexual sexual activity and related conduct”, called for an independent panel, led by the commissioner and including the registrar under the Working with Vulnerable People Act 2013 and the dean of law at the University of Tasmania.

Banks’s report has been credited with progressing the issue to parliament and Croome urged the government to follow her recommendation.

In the report, Banks cited concern that a scheme located within an agency “historically connected with the enforcement of anti-gay laws” might deter applicants.

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Croome, who was arrested at Salamanca Place among 130 other gay rights activists in 1988 and was among those to receive a formal apology from the Hobart City Council two decades later, welcomed the government’s intent to also formally apologise to men convicted of homosexual acts, and said it was impossible to overestimate the significance.

“That apology was one of the most important days of their lives, and that’s an apology for just one incident,” he said.

“I think the apology the government gives next year to accompany this legislation will be even more profoundly important. Having gone through that apology with Hobart City Council, I have no doubt this will go some way to repairing the damage.”

The legislation will be introduced next year.