With WorldPride about to kick off in Sydney, it is important that we do more than just celebrate the wonderful and diverse LGBTIQA+ cultures and work towards really improving people in the community’s lives.

The NSW LGBTIQ+ Health Strategy showed the severe health, mental health and welfare consequences of stigma and discrimination, which current New South Wales laws allow, and in some situations, promote. My Equality Bill will remove all legislated discrimination and the first tranche of laws will ban conversion practices.

Conversion practices are sustained efforts and treatments aimed at changing a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. They can take many forms, sometimes disguised as psychological treatment sometimes as pastoral care. My bill will ban these practices and provide a civil process for the Anti-Discrimination Board to deal with reports through education, mediation and in cases of serious or systemic practices, through orders enforced by NCAT. The bill includes criminal offences however these are only triggered where there is injury or harm. 

Conversion practices insinuate that a person who is homosexual, bisexual or transgender is broken and needs fixing. Not only do they not work, they also cause significant long term psychological damage. It’s time that our laws stopped the harm and acknowledged that there is nothing wrong with being LGBT. See the Sydney Morning Herald report >  HERE