"Thank you for giving us a future that is better than your past," the Premier said during his apology to those who had been criminalised for "an ancient prejudice". Until the Wran Government in 1984 abolished decriminalised homosexual acts, in NSW, those found guilty could face up to 5 years in jail.
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00:00 Mr Speaker, I move that this House, on behalf of the people of New South Wales, apologises
00:06 unreservedly to those convicted under discriminatory laws that criminalise homosexual acts; recognises
00:14 and regrets this Parliament's role in enacting laws and endorsing policies of successive
00:21 governments' decisions that criminalised, persecuted and harmed people based on their
00:26 sexuality and gender; recognises the trauma people of diverse sexualities, their families
00:33 and loved ones have endured and continue to live with; and lastly, acknowledges that there
00:40 is still much more work to do to ensure the equal rights of all members of the LGBTQIA+
00:48 community.
00:49 Mr Speaker, 40 years ago, New South Wales ended the legal criminalisation of homosexuality
00:59 in this State.
01:01 And here today, as a Parliament and as a State, as people who want to make good, we're here
01:06 to apologise for every life that was damaged or diminished or destroyed by these unjust
01:14 laws.
01:15 To those who survived these terrible years and to those who never made it through, we
01:20 are truly sorry.
01:22 We're sorry for every person convicted under legislation that should never have existed,
01:28 for every person who experienced fear as a result of that legislation, everyone who lost
01:34 a job, who lost their future or who lost the love of family and friends.
01:40 We are very sorry for every person, convicted or otherwise, who were made to live a smaller
01:46 life because of these laws.
01:50 People who reached the end of their days without ever voicing who they really were, without
01:55 ever experiencing the greatest of human joys, which is the joy of love.
02:00 We are sorry.
02:02 And as a State, we told you you were wrong.
02:05 But the truth is, you were never wrong.
02:08 These laws were wrong.
02:10 And today we can openly acknowledge that truth.
02:15 These cruel laws could have been written in a single sentence across 22 words in the Crimes
02:20 Act.
02:22 But the real story of the legislation was written through the lives of the people that
02:25 it targeted.
02:26 They were good people, like Peter Bonsalboom.
02:30 Bon, as he was known to friends, met his partner, Peter, in 1966.
02:37 In his own words, it was love at first sight.
02:40 Bon and Peter were an incredibly brave couple who, in 1972, became the first man to kiss
02:46 on national TV.
02:49 But before all that, Bon was arrested and convicted under this legislation.
02:54 As a result of that conviction, he was kicked out of the Anglican Seminary, where he was
02:59 studying to be a priest.
03:01 And when he went home to his family, he was told that he was no longer welcome there.
03:06 For the rest of his life, that criminal record followed him around like a great weight of
03:10 shame, holding him back, slowing him down.
03:15 Because of this, he could never work as a Commonwealth or State public servant.
03:20 He couldn't sit on a jury.
03:21 He couldn't serve as a justice of the peace.
03:25 When he went to buy a house with Peter, they found it very difficult to borrow money.
03:29 So these laws came with a sense of humiliation and exclusion, a sense of pain.
03:36 They also carried a deeply practical burden on everyday life.
03:40 Later, when Bon needed an income, he applied to work as a taxi driver, but was told no.
03:46 That couldn't happen because of the conviction.
03:49 When he tried to do some good in the community, as he volunteered to teach new immigrants
03:54 the English language, he was questioned about his suitability to work with people.
04:00 Bon passed away seven years ago.
04:03 But even at the end of his life, 50 years after the arrests, it still weighed on him.
04:08 So in 2014, when this Parliament passed a law allowing for the expungement of these
04:13 historical convictions, it meant a great deal for people like Bon.
04:18 Just weeks before he died, Bon received that official letter, notifying him that his criminal
04:24 record had been extinguished.
04:27 Peter read those words out to him and said it was the final time he ever smiled.
04:35 That is what this legislation meant for the people who were outlawed by it.
04:39 So today we apologise to Bon and Peter, and everyone who was forced to walk that same
04:45 lonely path.
04:48 People from that time will tell you about the horrible isolation.
04:51 One man told us that he was still anxious that family members would discover his convictions
04:56 40 years later.
04:58 They recalled the sense of danger that surrounded every interaction with authorities.
05:03 There was another man named Barry.
05:07 He had his apartment robbed, and he did what anyone else would do in the same set of circumstances.
05:16 He called the police.
05:18 When the police arrived on the scene, they quickly shifted from the burglary investigation
05:22 to his living arrangements.
05:25 What kind of relationship did he have with his flatmate?
05:28 Did they share a single bed?
05:31 Were they breaking any laws?
05:33 As a result, he was threatened and intimidated, and left in no uncertain terms that he was
05:38 the real criminal here.
05:39 For gay men, that threat was always lurking.
05:43 Not too long before that, the police commissioner had described homosexuality as "the greatest
05:48 menace facing Australia".
05:51 That fear was intense, because the punishments were severe.
05:55 If they were caught, men could be arrested, fined and locked up.
05:59 To save themselves, they were encouraged to inform on their partners, to other members
06:03 of the gay community, to avoid jail time.
06:07 Many also accepted the so-called court-endorsed treatments.
06:13 That included, shamefully, electroshock therapy, where a voltage was pumped through a patient's
06:19 body while they were shown pictures of naked men.
06:23 Others were given drugs designed to bring on nausea and vomiting.
06:27 Of course, none of it worked.
06:31 You can't shock someone out of who they love, and you can't rewire their basic humanity.
06:38 One of the great advantages in recent years has been the discrediting of aversion therapy,
06:43 conversion therapy and other forms of pseudoscience.
06:47 That argument was made by the gay community, in particular by our colleague the Member
06:52 for Sydney.
06:53 As a parliament, we were proud to continue in their footsteps last month by banning conversion
06:58 therapy in New South Wales.
07:01 These laws were directed at the sex lives of men, but they also produced the kind of
07:06 society that suppressed the relationships of women as well.
07:10 Gay love was a taboo, and a thick wall of silence surrounded the love of two women.
07:15 As a female librarian from Sydney wrote at the time, I find it hard to express the bewilderment,
07:22 the conflict and the anxiety that overshadowed my late adolescence, as I realised how different
07:28 and how unacceptable my own pattern of loving was, and yet how real it was to me.
07:36 That isolation, that confusion and that sense of fundamental difference all began in the
07:43 same place as these laws.
07:46 Robin was one of those women, a courageous woman, who attended the first Mardi Gras in
07:51 1978.
07:53 Growing up, she remembers watching how she dressed.
07:57 She was especially careful about holding hands with other women.
08:00 Her fears were realised when her picture was published in the newspaper after the first
08:05 Mardi Gras.
08:06 Remembering that moment, she says, 'My life flashed before my eyes.
08:11 I thought I was going to lose my job.
08:13 I was really worried about my teaching career and the fact that it would be ruined.'
08:18 For another woman, also named Robin, that fear was very real.
08:22 Robin lost two jobs because of her sexuality.
08:25 She kept other jobs by inventing imaginary boyfriends as a cover story.
08:30 She saw friends kicked out of homes.
08:32 She watched families turn their backs.
08:35 This was a time when many lesbians felt invisible, like they didn't exist.
08:40 If their partner was sick or dying in hospital, they may not be allowed in to see them.
08:46 The state didn't recognise their relationship or see them as what they fundamentally were,
08:52 part of a family.
08:54 The state didn't—others were judged as unsuitable mums, had their children taken
08:58 from them just because of their sexuality.
09:03 All of this was deeply wrong, and all of it was our fault.
09:06 So today we say we are very sorry.
09:11 Reliving these memories must be painful for anyone who experienced them.
09:15 They may even be a different kind of distress for young people hearing about them today.
09:20 Younger people thinking or maybe imagining how different things would have been for them
09:25 if they were born a generation or two earlier.
09:28 What would their life have looked like if these laws had never changed?
09:32 But I think it's important to state clearly today that these changes didn't just happen
09:36 because of good luck or some natural movement towards an inevitable change.
09:44 These changes followed one of the most successful social movements in the history of the state
09:49 of New South Wales.
09:52 Forty years ago, Neville Rand submitted a private member's bill to amend the Crimes
09:56 Act.
09:57 It's very important to acknowledge that that bill was seconded by Nick Griner and passed
10:02 by both Houses of Parliament.
10:05 It was a great day, a day this Parliament could rightly and justifiably be proud of.
10:11 But for at least 15 years before that moment, activists and allies had been fighting for
10:16 these changes, risking their careers and their safety in the process.
10:22 It began in 1970 with the Campaign Against Moral Persecution, or CAMP, as they called
10:28 themselves.
10:29 That spirit continued in political parties, even in church groups, in trade unions, in
10:35 sporting clubs, in neighbourhood conversations and even around the family dinner table.
10:42 As Gary Wotherspoon wrote of those years, "How wonderful it was to be part of a whole
10:47 group of people who could actually talk about homosexuality and not be scared."
10:54 It was great bravery that people took their message to the streets.
10:58 They shared it in workplaces and across dinner tables.
11:02 They spoke in quiet voices as well as through very loud megaphones.
11:08 They did it with a sense of flair and creativity and, I think, fundamentally fun that proved
11:14 impossible for the rest of society to resist.
11:17 People wanted to join this movement.
11:20 They could sense that that's where all the fun was and that these laws needed to change.
11:25 In the year before this law reform, a group of people established the Gay Embassy in a
11:30 caravan which held vigils encouraging MPs to hurry up with the changes.
11:36 Jill Rand is here today and she might remember that particular consular visit in Willara.
11:42 In the same year, two other activists took things a step further.
11:47 Lex Watson and Robert French decided to sign a statutory declaration acknowledging that
11:52 they'd broken these laws without a hint of shame or embarrassment.
11:58 They then walked those forms into the police station and handed it to the head of the vice
12:02 squad.
12:03 The detective sergeant apparently was lost for words and no charges were laid that day.
12:10 Each of these actions was part of a wave.
12:13 It was a wave that grew in size and in speed and momentum and swept away the legal enforcement
12:19 of this ancient, ancient prejudice.
12:23 It's one of the great underdog stories of Australian history.
12:27 People who were pushed to the margins all their lives, who were denied and disrespected
12:32 and criminalised for who they were, but who in the end insisted on being themselves, who
12:39 challenged every social convention and who, with the help of the Rand Labor Government,
12:45 succeeded in changing the law of the land.
12:49 That bill was an important step on the long road to justice and equality.
12:54 As a government, we know that we're not there yet.
12:58 There will still be kids today who feel that they've got something to hide, either from
13:03 themselves or their schoolmates, maybe from their sporting teams, certainly from potentially
13:09 family and friends, and maybe even from themselves.
13:13 The member for Sydney is currently progressing his equality bill and we want to work with
13:17 him and we will work with him in good faith and with a shared ambition to help vulnerable
13:23 people.
13:24 But in the end, true progress is not really measured in laws passed or statutes amended
13:29 by themselves.
13:31 It's measured in the lives of people, in how we treat each other, in how we feel to be
13:36 ourselves in our own communities.
13:39 When I look around this state, I've seen a slow but unmistakable revolution in my own
13:45 lifetime.
13:47 When I think about how kids in my generation treated each other and then I look at the
13:51 current generation coming through, it is the difference between night and day.
13:56 This generation, the younger generation, are more open, they're more tolerant, they're
14:01 more accepting of difference.
14:04 And if anyone is responsible for those changes, it's the people we are apologising to today.
14:12 I hope you feel a great sense of vindication for that precise feeling, for that sense of
14:17 change.
14:19 In the depths of the bad old days, this must have seemed almost like an impossible prospect,
14:25 but you did it.
14:26 You changed our attitudes, our laws and many people's lives.
14:31 So today we are sorry for the unforgivable pain we put you through, but we're also here
14:37 to offer you thanks for giving us a future that is better than your past.
14:42 Amen.
14:44 [BLANK_AUDIO]