Sydney MP Alex Greenwich says he will seek to ban gay conversion practices and remove a swathe of laws that discriminate against LGBTQ+ people in New South Wales in a bill, to help determine who he’d support if next year’s election results in a hung parliament.
The announcement has been welcomed by advocate group Equality Australia, with chief executive Anna Brown calling for multiparty support for the legislation.
Greenwich, an independent, said on Friday that he would begin consultation on an omnibus “equality” bill that would seek to unwind a series of discriminatory laws against LGBTQ+ people ahead of next year’s global WorldPride event in Sydney.
The bill to be presented in draft form later this year, before being voted on after the next election, would remove wide-ranging exemptions in the state’s 45-year-old anti-discrimination act that allow private schools to discriminate against gay or trans students and teachers.
The bill would also allow trans people to change their sex or gender on legal documents without undergoing surgery, while also ending the “unnecessary medical procedures” carried out on intersex people without their consent.
Significantly, the bill would also seek to ban gay conversion practices, a move which would bring the state into line with other jurisdictions such as Victoria, which recently passed similar legislation.
On Friday, Greenwich said he was flagging his intention to introduce the bill to put both the government and Labor on notice that, in the case of a hung parliament, the bill could play a deciding factor in who he throws his support behind.
“I’m making it clear early on to the major parties that how they approach this bill will be a key factor in who I will decide to support in a [minority] government situation in the next election,” he said.
While some parts of the reform would be straightforward – removing discrimination exemptions for gay teachers and students would only require an amendment of the existing act – Greenwich said a ban on conversion practices would be more complex because NSW does not have a human rights act similar to the one used to ban the practice in Victoria.
For that reason, he said, he was starting a wide-ranging consultation process before seeking to present a draft of the bill later this year.
Advocates have long argued that NSW’s anti-discrimination act, which was seen as a landmark change when it passed in 1977, is long overdue for reform.
Last year, the Public Interest Advocacy Centre released a report arguing the bill offered protection to “a narrow range of groups”, had “outdated tests for what constitutes discrimination” and contained “excessively broad exceptions allowing discrimination by organisations like private educational authorities”.
“The act is long, complex and idiosyncratic,” the report stated.
Brown said Equality Australia wanted to see strong support from political parties for the bill.
“In NSW, our communities are still subjected to so-called conversion ‘therapy’, trans people still face cruel and unnecessary barriers to accessing accurate identity documents, doctors are still performing unnecessary medical procedures on intersex people without their consent, and private schools and religious organisations are still able to sack, expel or deny service to LGBTQ+ people,” Brown said.
“Reforms like this can only succeed with multi-partisan support. We call on the NSW government and opposition to work with LGBTIQ+ people to progress full equality for our communities.”
While Greenwich and two other independents currently have an informal agreement with the Coalition government not to block supply, they have never entered into any formal deal.
Greenwich has previously navigated abortion decriminalisation laws through the NSW parliament in 2019, and his voluntary assisted dying bill passed through the lower house at the end of 2021. It is due to be debated the state’s upper house next week.
