History Official persecution Sodomy was originally outlawed throughout the island from the time of British settlement. The law was retained post federation as in all other Australian jurisdictions. Tasmania was the last
British Empire outpost to carry out the death penalty for sodomy in 1867. In the late 1980s, Premier
Robin Gray stated that homosexuals were unwelcome in Tasmania and police recorded the
vehicle registration plates of people attending gay community meetings. By the early 1990s, the state had the harshest penalty for gay sex in the Western world at 21 years imprisonment.
UNHRC complaint and federal response The Tasmanian Parliament's repeated refusal to pass laws decriminalising private same-sex sexual acts resulted in local resident Nicholas Toonen bringing a human rights complaint to the
United Nations Human Rights Committee, which ruled in Toonen's favour on 31 March 1994. The Committee noted that "the criminalisation of homosexual practices cannot be considered a reasonable means or proportionate measure to achieve the aim of preventing the spread of AIDS/HIV," further noting that "The Australian Government observes that statutes criminalising homosexual activity tend to impede public health programmes by driving underground many of the people at the risk of infection." Gay activists and
Amnesty International also mounted a campaign in favour of reform including demonstrations in the state and elsewhere, holding meetings between LGBTI Tasmanians and community groups across the state and gay men self-reporting their then-illegal consensual activities to police to illustrate that the laws were unenforceable, given that police would not prosecute them on the basis that it was not in the public interest. The continued criminalisation led to a petition signed by 12,000 people and a "Buy Right" boycott campaign targeting Tasmanian tourism and produce until the laws were repealed. Four months after the UNHRC decision and after failing to persuade the Tasmanian Government to repeal the offending laws, the Keating government passed the
Human Rights (Sexual Conduct) Act 1994, with section 4 legalising sexual activity between consenting adults throughout Australia and prohibiting any laws that arbitrarily interfere with the sexual conduct of adults in private. Lavarch stated the Tasmanian law was "an obnoxious criminal provision which doesn't exist anywhere else in Australia and is inconsistent with Australia's human-rights obligations". This approach was criticised by activists and academics for abdicating the political responsibility of legislators for an uncomfortable issue to the courts. The
Tasmanian Greens under
Christine Milne then began to push vigorously for law reform. Royal Assent was received on 13 May 1997 and the law came into effect the next day.
Historical conviction expungement scheme In December 2015, the Tasmanian
Liberal Government announced it would introduce legislation in the
Tasmanian Parliament to expunge historic criminal records for consensual homosexual sexual activity. This announcement followed a report released by the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Commissioner in April 2015 which recommended the establishment of such a scheme and how it should be modelled. Individuals charged with offences pertaining to homosexual sexual conduct prior to its decriminalisation in 1997 will be able to submit an application with the state's Secretary of the Department of Justice to have such charges removed from their criminal records. On 6 April 2017, the
Expungement of Historical Offences Act 2017 was introduced to the
Tasmanian House of Assembly by
Attorney-General Vanessa Goodwin. The bill would allow those who were convicted of homosexual sexual offences (prior to its decriminalisation in Tasmania in 1997) and
cross-dressing (which was an offence under the
Police Offences Act 1935, until being repealed in 2001) to apply to the Secretary for the Department of Justice, or have a person apply on their behalf if deceased, to have their conviction expunged. The bill was debated in the Assembly on 13 April, and was passed in the Assembly on 2 May 2017. Several amendments designed to streamline procedures relating to applications, the treatment of sensitive data and the decision-making process were agreed to by the council. The law went into effect on 9 April 2018. Schemes of this nature exist in all other jurisdictions of Australia. As of November 2020, a proposal to establish a
compensation scheme for individuals convicted of same-sex sexual activity or cross dressing prior to 1997 and 2001 respectively is being drafted.
Parliamentary apology On 13 April 2017, the
Tasmanian Government, represented by
Premier Will Hodgman, issued an official parliamentary apology to members of the LGBT community in Tasmania who had been historically affected by laws which criminalised homosexuality in the state until 1997. Hodgman stated that "it is [the government's] view that the broader Tasmanian community would believe that people should never have been charged or convicted in the first place, even if it was thought at the time it was the right thing to do, it was not".
Leader of the Opposition Rebecca White also issued an official apology, saying an apology was "long overdue" for the "terrible injustice done as a result of these laws".
Cassy O'Connor, leader of the
Greens, asked the LGBTI Tasmanian community "to forgive us for not holding you in our arms". ==Recognition of same-sex relationships==