Mr Speaker –
Forty years ago, New South Wales ended the legal criminalisation of homosexuality in this state.
And here today, as a parliament and as a state, as people who want to make good, we are here to apologise for every life that was damaged or diminished or destroyed by these unjust laws.
To those who survived those terrible years; and to those who never made it through.
We are truly sorry.
We are sorry for every person convicted under legislation that should never have existed.
For every person who experienced fear as a result of that legislation.
Everyone who lost a job, who lost their future, who lost the love of family and friends.
We are sorry for every person – convicted or otherwise – who were made to live a smaller life because of these laws.
People who reached the end of their days without ever voicing who they really were; without ever experiencing the greatest human joy – which is the joy of love.
We are sorry.
And as a state, we told you, you were wrong.
But the truth is – you were never wrong.
These laws were wrong.
And today, we can openly acknowledge that truth.
Mr Speaker –
These cruel laws could have been written in a single sentence, across twenty-two words in the Crimes Act.
But the real story of the legislation was written through the lives of the people it targeted.
They were good people, like Peter Bonsall-Boone.
Bon, as he was known to friends, met his partner, Peter, in 1966.
In his own words – it was love at first sight.
Bon and Peter were an incredibly brave couple, who in 1972, became the first men to kiss on national TV.
But before all that, Bon was arrested and convicted under this legislation.
As a result of that conviction:
He was kicked out of the Anglican seminary, where he was studying to be a priest.
And when he went home to his family, he was told that he was no longer welcome there.
For the rest of his life, that criminal record followed him around, like a great weight of shame, holding him back, slowing him down.
Because of this, he could never work as a Commonwealth or state public servant.
He couldn’t sit on a jury; he couldn’t serve as a justice of the peace.
And when he went to buy a house with Peter, they found it very difficult to borrow money.
So these laws came with a sense of humiliation and exclusion, a sense of pain.
But they also carried a deeply practical burden on everyday life.
Later, when Bon needed an income, he applied to work as a taxi driver – but was told no, that couldn’t happen because of the conviction.
And when he tried to do some good in the community – as he volunteered to teach new immigrants the English language – he was questioned about his suitability to work with people.
Bon passed away seven years ago.
But even at the end of his life, fifty years after the arrests, it still weighed on him.
So in 2014, when this parliament passed a law – allowing for the expungement of these historical convictions – it meant a great deal for people like Bon.
And just weeks before he died, Bon received that official letter – notifying him that his criminal record had been extinguished.
Peter read those words out to him – and it was the final time that he ever smiled.
Mr Speaker –
That is what this legislation meant for the people who were outlawed by it.
So today we apologise to Bon and Peter and everyone who was forced to walk that same lonely path.
People from that time will tell you about the horrible isolation.
One man told us that he was still anxious that family members would discover his conviction, forty years later.
They recall the sense of danger that surrounded every interaction with authorities.
There was another man named Barry. He had his apartment robbed. And he did what anyone else would do in the same set of circumstances – he called the police.
But when the Police arrived on the scene, they quickly shifted from the burglary investigation to his living arrangements.
What kind of relationship did he have with his flatmate?
Did they share a single bed?
Were they breaking any laws?
As a result, he was threatened, intimidated, and left in no uncertain terms – that he was the real criminal here.
For gay men, that threat was always lurking.
Not too long before that, the Police Commissioner had described homosexuality as quote ‘the greatest menace’ facing Australia.
The fear was intense, because the punishment was severe.
If they were caught, men could be arrested, fined and locked up.
To save themselves, they were encouraged to inform on their partners or other members of the gay community, and that was to avoid jailtime.
Many also accepted the so called ‘court endorsed treatments’.
That included, shamefully, electroshock therapy – where a voltage was pumped through a patient’s body, while they were shown pictures of naked men.
Others were given drugs, designed to bring on nausea and vomiting.
Now of course, none of it worked.
You can’t shock someone out of who they love; you can’t rewire their basic humanity.
And one of the great advantages in recent years has been the discrediting of aversion therapy and conversion therapy and other forms of pseudoscience.
That argument was made by the gay community, in particular by our colleague the Member for Sydney – and as a parliament we were proud to continue in their footsteps last month, by banning conversion therapy in New South Wales.
These laws, Mr Speaker, were directed at the sex lives of men.
But they produced the kind of society that also suppressed the relationships of women as well.
Gay love was a taboo – and a thick wall of silence surrounded the love of two women.
As a female librarian from Sydney wrote at the time:
‘I find it hard to express the bewilderment, the conflict and the anxiety that overshadowed my late adolescence, as I realised how different, how unacceptable, was my own pattern of loving, and yet how real it was to me.’
Mr Speaker, that isolation; that confusion; that sense of fundamental difference – it all began in the same place as these laws.
Robyn was one of those women, a courageous woman, who attended the first Mardi Gras in 1978.
Growing up, she remembers watching how she dressed.
She was especially careful about holding hands with other women.
Her fears were realised when her picture was published in the newspaper after that original Mardi Gras.
Remembering that moment, she says:
‘My life flashed before my eyes. I thought I was going to lose my job. I was really worried about my teaching career and that fact that it would be ruined’.
For another woman – also named Robyn – that fear was very real.
Robyn lost two jobs because of her sexuality.
She kept other jobs by inventing imaginary boyfriends as a cover story.
She saw friends kicked out of homes.
She watched families turn their backs.
This was a time when many lesbians felt invisible; like they didn’t exist.
If their partner was sick or dying in hospital, they may not be allowed in to see them.
The state didn’t recognise their relationship, or see them as what they fundamentally were, part of a family.
Others were judged as unsuitable mums, had their children taken from them, just because of their sexuality.
Now Mr Speaker, all of this was deeply wrong.
And all of it was our fault.
So today we say, we are very sorry.
Mr Speaker –
Reliving these memories must be painful for anyone who experienced them.
They may even be a different kind of distress for young people hearing about them today.
Younger people thinking – or maybe imagining how different things would have been for them, if they were born a generation or two earlier.
What would their life had looked like if these laws had never changed?
But I think it’s important to state clearly today that these changes didn’t happen because of good luck, or some natural movement towards an inevitable change.
These changes followed one of the most successful social movements in the history of the state of New South Wales.
Forty years ago, Neville Wran submitted a private members bill to amend the Crimes Act.
It’s very important to acknowledge that that Bill was seconded by Nick Greiner and passed both houses of parliament.
It was a great day – a day this parliament could rightly and justifiably be proud of.
But for at least fifteen years before that moment, activists and allies had been fighting for these changes, risking their careers and their safety in the process.
It began in 1970, with the Campaign Against Moral Persecution – or CAMP, as they called themselves.
That spirit continued in political parties, even in church groups, in trade unions, in sporting clubs, in neighbourhood conversations and even around the family dinner table.
As Gary Wotherspoon wrote of those years:
‘How wonderful it was to be part of a whole group of people who could actually talk about homosexuality and not be scared’.
It was great bravery, Mr Speaker, that people took their message to the streets.
They shared it in workplaces and across dinner tables.
They spoke in quiet voices as well as through very loud megaphones.
And they did it with a sense of flare and creativity and I think fundamentally fun, that proved impossible for the rest of society to resist. People wanted to join this movement.
They could sense that that’s where all the fun was, and that these laws needed to change.
Mr Speaker, in the year before this law reform, a group of people established the Gay Embassy in a caravan, which held vigils encouraging MPs to hurry up with the changes.
Jill Wran, I think is here today – and she might remember that particular consular visit in Woollahra.
In the same year, two other activists took things a step further.
Lex Watson and Robert French decided to sign a statutory declaration, acknowledging that they had broken these laws, without a hint of shame or embarrassment.
They then walked those forms into the police station and handed it to the head of the Vice Squad.
The Detective Sergeant apparently was lost for words – and no charges were laid that day.
Mr Speaker, each of these actions was part of a wave; it was a wave that grew in size and in speed and momentum; and which swept away the legal enforcement of this ancient, ancient prejudice.
It’s one of the great underdog stories in Australian history.
People who were pushed to the margins all their lives.
Who were denied and disrespected and criminalised for who they were.
But who, in the end, insisted on being themselves.
Who challenged every social convention.
And who – with the help of the Wran Labor Government – succeeded in changing the law of the land.
Mr Speaker –
That bill was an important step on the long road to justice and equality.
As a Government, we know that we’re not there yet.
There will still be kids today who feel that they’ve got something to hide. Either from their schoolmates, maybe from their sporting teams. Certainly from, potentially, family and friends. And maybe even from themselves.
The Member for Sydney is currently progressing his Equality Bill – and we want to work with him, and we will work with him in good faith and with a shared ambition to help vulnerable people.
But in the end, true progress is not really measured in laws passed, or statutes amended by themselves.
It’s measured in the lives of people; in how we treat each other; in how we feel to be ourselves in our own communities.
And when I look around this state – I’ve seen a slow but unmistakable revolution in my own lifetime.
When I think about how kids in my generation treated each other; and then I look at the current generation coming through – it is the difference between night and day.
This generation, the younger generation, are more open, they’re more tolerant, they’re more accepting of difference.
And if anyone is responsible for those changes – it’s the people we are apologising to today.
I hope you feel a great sense of vindication for that precise feeling, for that sense of change.
In the depths of the bad old days, this must have seemed almost like an impossible prospect.
But you did it.
You changed our attitudes, our laws and many people’s lives.
So today, we are sorry – for the unforgivable pain we put you through.
But we’re also here to offer you thanks – for giving us a future that is better than your past.
