Tasmania Leads With Compensation For Historic Anti-Gay And Cross-Dressing Convictions
Tasmania has become the first state in Australia to offer financial redress to people charged or convicted under historic laws targeting homosexuality and cross-dressing. Both houses backed the reform, clearing the way for applications to open under an amended expungement scheme.
Successful applicants will receive fixed payments: $15,000 for a charge, $45,000 for a conviction and $75,000 for time in custody or psychiatric detention. Payments flow automatically once a historic record is expunged, which keeps the process cleaner and less traumatic for survivors.
Tasmania decriminalised sex between men in 1997, the last jurisdiction in the country to do so. It was also the only state to criminalise cross-dressing, a measure that remained on the books until 2001. For decades before that, men faced penalties of up to 21 years in prison, and around 100 people were convicted between the 1940s and mid-1980s. This scheme acknowledges that harm and starts to make amends.
Change did not happen by accident.
In 1994, activist Nicholas Toonen won a case at the United Nations Human Rights Committee, or UNHRC (United Nations Human Rights Committee), which found Tasmania’s laws breached the right to privacy and equality. That decision helped spur the federal Human Rights (Sexual Conduct) Act 1994 and, eventually, the High Court matter known as Croome v Tasmania, confirming the Commonwealth could act against those state laws. The redress scheme builds on that history.
Voices behind the reform.
Human-rights scholar Paula Gerber says the scheme cannot erase the “dehumanising discrimination and deep harm,” but it “goes some way to righting the wrongs.” Equality Tasmania’s Rodney Croome calls it “a new type of law” and urges every jurisdiction to follow. Their push underlines the next step: national consistency.
