1982. Politics: NSW Government ignores anti-discrimination findings
The New South Wales Anti-Discrimination Board (ADB) was established in 1977 as one of the provisions of the Anti-Discrimination Act of that year.
Under its original terms, the Act outlawed discrimination on the grounds of sex, race or marital status. Homosexuality was also meant to be included but this was dropped in the face of major opposition. Significantly, this came not only from the Parliamentary Opposition but also from the Labor Government’s own Catholic and right-wing MPs.
In the face of such entrenched homophobia, the Anti Discrimination Board produced a 650-page report Discrimination and Homosexuality in 1982. It produced extensive evidence of discrimination against LGBT people and also systematically demolished the myths upon which some of this discrimination is based (for example, we are a threat to children). The evidence included examples of discrimination not only by individuals but also by institutions. One particular institution was the NSW Police Service, which was seen to not only actively harass LGBT people but also deliberately entrap gay men using so-called ‘pretty police’.
Given the evidence of such widespread discrimination, it came as little surprise that the ADB concluded its report with 35 recommendations to tackle the problem. These included decriminalisation of homosexuality, introducing education about sexuality into schools and addressing the strained relationship between police and LGBT people. Central to the latter was the ending of police surveillance and deliberate entrapment of gay men.
Whilst the report received widespread coverage in the media, the NSW Government effectively ignored it, offering only the token gesture of adding homosexuality to the provisions of the Anti-Discrimination Act. This seemed to be a particularly strange measure given that homosexuality was still illegal, despite repeated efforts to decriminalise it and the ADB’s own recommendations.
It was to be another two years before the NSW Premier, Neville Wran, finally saw the light and introduced his own Private Members Bill on decriminalisation. There had been a number of unsuccessful Private Members Bills before but it was obviously Wran’s position as Party leader that ensured that previously recalcitrant Labour MPs did the right thing on this occasion.
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