Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Honourable Deputy Speaker, I rise to speak on the Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill, and I thank Dr Woodruff for bringing it on. I am so proud to be part of it. I acknowledge the staff in Dr Woodruff’s office for their hard work on this bill in helping to bring it to this point. To Thomas and Alice, in particular, thank you. I also acknowledge the immense contribution of survivors and advocates for telling their stories, sharing their experiences, articulating their values and standing up for others. To Rodney and Amilie, and those watching online, thank you for helping us get to this point. I acknowledge that this issue, this debate and its relevance to your lives and those in our community may be difficult and trigger trauma and pain. Please look after each other, both today and in the wake of tomorrow’s resolution on this bill. Your lives, your hearts and your very souls are being publicly debated and subject to ignorant attack, callous indifference, and arguments anchored in bigotry, misinformation, and disinformation.
This is life-saving legislation, law that will prevent the immense harm caused by conversion practices conducted in the flawed belief that sexual orientation and gender identity are conditions that can be cured. They are not. That is the science and medical advice, that is the lived experience, that is the simple reality. It’s a matter of great shame that Tasmania was the last Australian state to decriminalise homosexuality, in 1997. But the progress made since on justice and equity for our LGBTIQA+ family is rightly a matter of great pride and something we, all the way up to the government, embrace and espouse. As expressed by Rodney on the Tasmanian website of Brand Tasmania:
When you feel discouraged and powerless, recall how this tiny corner of the planet defied every expectation to pull itself up by its rainbow bootstraps and reinvent itself. The history of this spectacular transformation is long and sometimes painful. It was only because many people worked together to pool their talents and encourage each other.
And so, it is with the Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill, a collaborative effort across the community and across this parliament to create this bill and give it the time it needs to be thoroughly debated and finally resolved. Thank you to one and all involved. I acknowledge Labor and the crossbench for your flexibility in pushing our private members business rotation to clear the decks for today. I acknowledge the government in allowing us the time today and tomorrow to debate and resolve this bill.
I want to make clear to the Chamber that it is our and other members’ intention to resolve this bill this week. We have sought advice from the Clerks and intend to ensure that there is a resolution to this bill in full before tomorrow night. This is a most important bill, a bill of life and death, a bill of significant consequence to many in our community, and a bill of good conscience. That’s why the Premier has, in a welcome decision, offered his members a conscience vote. This is a bill too important and the community in question too exposed to leave hanging, adjourned with no resolution and no clear pathway forward. We will move to conclude this bill tomorrow and we urge all members to engage in this process with this in mind. Make your points, distribute your amendments early and debate in good faith irrespective of the anticipated outcome because this is yet another issue where Tasmania lags behind other states and other advanced, compassionate and modern societies around the world.
The ACT and Queensland banned conversion practices in August 2020, Victoria in February 2025, South Australia and New South Wales in April 2025. Only Western Australia is yet to make this action to protect its people, but its Labor government has recommitted to it and is consulting with stakeholders and, I quote, ‘monitoring law reform in other jurisdictions’.
Eyes are on Lutruwita/Tasmania this week. People are watching parliament, this Chamber and us, as representatives. People are watching to see if Tasmania is, indeed, a jurisdiction that has taken stock of past failures, can recognise the pain and cost of inaction, and is prepared to finally do what is right, catch up to the country and demonstrate that we are able to make decisions that are evidence-based, compassionate and contemporary. Can we rise above the intolerance and ignorance? Can we continue this state’s important journey along a pathway of righting past wrongs, protecting precious people and being the world-leading place that we think we are, that we tell the world that we are? Or will we continue to permit a practice that harms Tasmanians, against the science and real medical advice, in the vain attempt to convert them into an image, a physical, psychological or sexual state that someone else believes is what’s right for them?
Globally, progressive, compassionate and caring communities are enacting law reform in this space. The western world is moving on from the Dark Ages. In March last year, the Finnish parliament voted 125 to 49 to support a citizens’ initiative calling for a ban on conversion practices. In July this year, new penal code laws came into force in Sweden that bolstered criminal law protections against conversion practices. Norway passed a ban on conversion practices in 2023. France unanimously passed a ban on conversion practices in 2022. The UK currently has a draft bill for a ban on conversion practices. Let Tasmania not be a laggard again. Let us, in here, do Tasmania proud and protect our people from actions that are proven to be harmful.
The evidence underpinning this bill is clear and unequivocal. The detailed work of the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute in its 2022 report, ‘Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Conversion Practices’, made the case for law reform, and it is an important part of the evidence and advice that has got us here today. The report was based on evidence received and accepted that conversion practices are happening in Tasmania and that they cause severe harm to people subjected to them. The TLRI concluded that conversion practices continue and remain a risk to LGBTIQA+ Tasmanians. It recommended that Tasmanian law is reformed to more appropriately deal with these harms and risks. This bill is that law reform and it has the backing of many. Expert community service and advocacy organisations have written to us all to put their perspectives and urge action to prohibit these practices in Tasmania. Women’s Health Tasmania wrote to us all. CEO Sally Bruce writes:
Women’s Health Tasmania strongly supports the passage of this bill. It will contribute to the ongoing good health and wellbeing of all Tasmanians by protecting members of our state’s LGBTIQA+ community, including transgender and gender-diverse people, from the harms caused by conversion practices that target gender identity and/or sexual orientation.The bill aligns with contemporary healthcare practices. The bill is evidence‑based. The bill protects vulnerable Tasmanians from harm. Protecting all Tasmanians from harm is not a radical act. The Tasmanian government has an obligation and duty to prevent the harm that conversion practices are proven to cause. Supporting the bill will accomplish this.
In correspondence with Dr Woodruff, Women’s Legal Service Tasmania CEO, Yvette Cehtel wrote:
The Women’s Legal Service Tasmania encourages you to afford all women equality through the Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill. Our service wants all women to be afforded access to quality services and legal services, and the attendant social supports are no exception. We do not want women to feel unable, embarrassed, or uncomfortable in their interactions and experiences with the law and the system that sits around that. We can do better in Tasmania and will do so if the legal scaffolding is placed to ensure we are all protected and equal under the law.
Trans and gender diverse parents last week wrote:
We write as parents of trans and gender diverse young people who are concerned about what is being said, and not said, in the current discussion about the Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill. What should be discussed more? Conversion practices are a real and harmful threat to our children and families. We know from local and national research that one in twenty young LGBTIQA+ Tasmanians go through conversion practices, and that as a result, they are three to four times more likely to have PTSD and to attempt suicide. We strongly support the Conversion Prohibition Bill. I urge Tasmanian lawmakers to hear our plea.
Amilie Courtney, here in the Chamber earlier today – and someone I first met several years ago in this very Chamber as part of the Youth Parliament and heard from as a witness in the Bullying and Discrimination in Schools Inquiry – made a submission to our consultation and laid out exactly what real help for a young trans woman looks like. Amilie writes:
As a transgender young woman, I understand the difference between genuine support – which allows someone the freedom to explore their identity without pressure or predetermined conclusions – and conduct that begins from the assumption that there is only one acceptable outcome. Although discrimination and conversion practice are not identical, they are frequently sustained by the same dangerous premise: that queer and transgender people are problems to be managed, corrected or contained, rather than human beings entitled to dignity, autonomy and safety. The Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill 2026 deserves to be welcomed because it clearly states that no person’s sexual orientation or gender identity is broken.
In a welcome contribution from the faith community, the Uniting Church in Australia supports the bill, and called out the fear campaign mounted against conversion prohibition legislation:
The Pride Circle of the Uniting Church in Australia endorse the Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill and urge you to vote for it. Pride Circle of the Uniting Church in Australia celebrates the contribution that LGBTIQA+ people bring to both the church and society, and as such any efforts to suggest that they need to repress, or renounce any part of their God-given identity is something that the Pride Circle would resolutely renounce.
We have all seen how those opposed to LGBTIQA+ equality seek to foster fear and opposition by declaring that religious freedom and parental rights are under attack. It is time we learnt that there is no substance to these fear campaigns. Religious freedom is as strong as ever in Australia and even though we have marriage equality, parental rights are no different, even though we have school-inclusion programs. The sky has not fallen in.
This goes to the response that is needed to rebut the detractors of this bill. Some of the opponents of this bill have tried to conveniently define conversion practices in a narrow way that only captures the manner in which they used to occur. Some interests would like us to see conversion practices simply as the use of barbaric practices using techniques such as electroconvulsive therapy – I heard this from minister Ellis earlier.
This is not a definition used by reputable organisations. It is a purposefully limited definition pushed by people who have an ideology that people whose sexual orientation or gender identity don’t match their worldview and should be changed to match their worldview. This doesn’t mean each and every person who puts forward this sort of definition is coming at it from this perspective, but there are powerful interests behind the scenes spreading misinformation to well-intentioned people. The reality is that conversion practices have changed in nature and those who still use these practices would be very interested in ensuring only the practices of the past are prohibited. The reason is very simple: they conduct or facilitate conversion practices, and they want to continue to do so.
The stories of people are very clear: while the use of techniques like ECT or aversion stimulus are undoubtedly harmful, the lifelong impacts on people’s mental health and relationships from convincing them their very identity is broken, sinful or morally unacceptable is devastating. You don’t need to use barbaric physical practices to cause deep and lasting harm. To the people who ask what evidence there is that conversion practices continue, the answer is testimonies: testimonies from survivors, testimonies from practitioners, and testimony from others. We’ve heard from victim/survivor testimony already in this debate.
There is a pervasive torrent of people expressing a view that trans people are not really the gender they identify as. Our own Police minister is putting out anti-trans social media content worthy of manosphere cultural war influencers. This is the pseudo-medical ideology that underpins conversion practices. The ideology is still pervasive. Survivors are still giving their accounts. A submitter to the TLRI report said that they would continue to undertake conversion practices even if laws were passed. On what reasonable or rational basis could one suggest that conversion practices don’t happen anymore? Only through defining conversion practice out of existence can this perspective hold water.
Again, in his contribution, we just heard Minister Ellis refer to them as the ‘so-called’ conversion practices. This isn’t the only deception that’s being used by those driving the messages behind this campaign. They would have people believe that we have an unclear definition that is broad and can’t be explained, that is despite this definition being used in other jurisdictions in Australia, this is despite our legislation having clear avoidance-of-doubt provisions, and this is despite us consistently and thoroughly providing detailed answers to queries and to numerous detailed public documents and explanations.
But what of the other side of this debate? Do they provide detailed explanations of the sort of conduct they think may be inadvertently captured? No, we get euphemisms. Euphemisms like ‘loving parental conversations’, or ‘guidance’ or ‘pastoral care’. Does that side of the debate elaborate on the details of the conduct they think might be at risk? No, it’s a deliberate and insincere campaign to sow doubt and fear in people. They don’t want to outline what conduct they are talking about because exploration or pastoral care sounds a lot more innocent than convincing a gay person that they’re broken and that they have to become a heterosexual in order to become a moral person. We’ve already heard in the debate today the devastating impact and futile nature of this approach.
I also need to point out the hypocrisy of those who are criticising a ban on conversion practices for being ideological or interfering in medical decisions, despite the fact that there is an explicit exemption of registered health practitioners. It begs the question: what else are they pushing for? A ban on gender-affirming care? An end to conversion practices is supported by the overwhelming majority of health and medical organisations, journal articles and evidence more broadly. Opposition to gender-affirming care is championed by anti-trans advocates and a tiny minority of those in the medical field.
On process, let me take umbrage with the Deputy Premier and his critique of the process and the actions of members in this place. On the one hand, he criticises members for the supposedly late distribution of amendments, then the next he flags his own, at the time yet to be distributed, and only distributed mid-afternoon this afternoon. Deputy Premier, this process has been long and extensive, starting with the TLRI report, itself informed by expert advice, comprehensive consultation, and deep professional consideration. This bill was laid on the table early last month and has been subject to repeat briefings both offered and given. Before that, it was out for public consultation for six weeks. It’s had every specific question responded to, it’s backed by extensive evidence, and it’s been coming for years and it’s time that we got it done.
I reiterate again to those opposed: that is the clear intention of the Greens, and we believe this House, to see this bill resolved this week. I believe that every person deserves to be loved for who they are, to be accepted, to be respected and to be protected. Every person has the right to be who they want to be, to love who they want, to live as the person that they know they are, not the person that someone else wants them to be. As humans, we are all fragile, we are all vulnerable, and we all deserve to be safe. In the face of the evidence, the lived experience and the science, the harm inflicted by conversion practices is not in question. As with all harms, it is our job as lawmakers to establish the structures, the processes and the penalties to prevent them. This bill does that.
This bill is well considered, well consulted, well constructed and well overdue. It is our job as lawmakers to pass it, and I urge all in this Chamber to do so. I commend the bill to the House, and I thank you for your attention.
