Thursday, 10 December 2020

Bills

Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020

Second reading

Debate resumed.

Mr WYNNE (Richmond—Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing) (14:53): I am delighted to speak today on the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020. In doing so I am reminded of the long journey that I have gone on with the LGBTQI community over really 20 years of my service here in this Parliament, and I reflect back on our earliest days when I was working as the parliamentary secretary to the then Attorney-General, Rob Hulls—that great reforming Attorney-General—where one of our first bodies of work was to remove I think in the order of 36 pieces of legislation that discriminated against the LGBTQI community. That was an extraordinary body of work which really set the foundation for so many other reforms that we have done in this area, because ultimately the motivation of not just the then Attorney-General and me but of this side of politics has always been about fairness and about equality.

I am just so thrilled today to have the opportunity to get up and make a contribution that continues in that really important pathway that was led all those years ago by the then Attorney-General, Rob Hulls. I have listened to many of the contributions that have been made across the chamber, and I have to say that when the chamber operates in the way that we have been able to tackle many of these social issues that have been the touchstone of community life, it is this chamber at its best. I have heard some really excellent contributions from the opposition benches and some excellent contributions from the government’s side, and it is incumbent upon me to actually call out my dear friend and colleague the member for Burwood. Some members had the honour of either being in the chamber here today or listening to his contribution in their offices. I believe it was one of the finest contributions that I have heard in this Parliament. Now, I know that is a big call. As you know, Speaker, I have been here quite a long time. But the contribution by the member for Burwood today, where he spoke to his lived experience and where he spoke from his heart about the struggles that a member of his family is going through and indeed his broader family is going through and the challenges that his family is confronting, was for me and I think for many people in this chamber a deeply moving experience. I say to my dear friend the member for Burwood, my heart goes out to you and my heart goes out to your family. I honour you. I honour your family, and I honour the challenge that you are working through at the moment.

I also know from conversation with you and recognise just how important the unit at the Royal Children’s Hospital has been to your family in supporting you and understanding the pathway and the issues that have to be confronted. We thank sincerely the Royal Children’s Hospital for the specialist care that they provide to so many families. I think in that context we are incredibly well served by this world-leading hospital in its very broadest offerings in terms of its support for our community going forward and indeed in the standing that our hospital, the Royal Children’s Hospital, has got. We think about the Good Friday Appeal, where people just are so generous. But they are generous to an organisation like the Royal Children’s Hospital because they understand absolutely the care that they give to our community.

Can I say in relation to the bill itself that the health complaints commissioner was asked to lead an inquiry into change or suppression—also known as conversion—practices in Victoria, and the commissioner recommended that the government legislate to prohibit these practices in all their forms. In 2019 I was at the Pride March, as I have been at any number of Pride marches, with the Premier and with the Minister for Equality when in fact the Premier announced that we would seek to legislate to condemn these practices. Of course it was very, very well supported by the broader community as well.

It is important to address why we have changed the language and why this has happened. Throughout the government’s consultation on the development of this bill we heard that the term ‘therapy’ was seen as too legitimising of these practices when in fact they have no basis in medicine whatsoever. Similarly, we heard also from faith groups—and it is important to hear from the faith groups about what their views are about this—who were concerned that the term ‘conversion’ diminished a concept that holds great importance to some people of faith, and I absolutely understand that. ‘Change or suppression practices’ avoids both of those concerns and tackles what the issue is really about—attempts to make people alter or hide a fundamental part of who they are.

This bill recognises that these practices are based on a fundamentally flawed ideology that a person’s sexuality or gender identity—somehow we can fix it, like we can fix a broken motor car. No, this is just absolutely abhorrent, and of course we know we cannot. There is no evidence at all—none, zero—that any person can have their sexuality or gender identity forcibly altered. Attempts to do so only cause massive harm and indeed sometimes lifelong harm or injury that survivors then must carry for the rest of their lives. Those are the people who managed to survive; there are so many people who could not cope with these conversion practices and tragically and sadly have taken their lives.

Here is the most fundamentally important part of the bill and indeed this debate: nobody is broken because of their sexuality or their gender identity. Nobody needs to be fixed. Nobody should ever be made to feel like they need to change such a fundamental part of who they are. LGBTQI Victorians deserve to live in a state which affirms their lives and ensures that they can live authentically as to their true selves. We have heard the stories of what happens when this is not the case, when people are fed an ideology which makes them believe they are broken, and that needs to stop.

This is a time for us as a Parliament to say, ‘We stand with you. We absolutely stand with you. We absolutely repudiate this revolting conversion therapy’. It has done incredible harm to people, and we have heard some testimony, particularly from colleagues in the opposition, about what profound harm this has done to people who have had to go through these vile episodes in their lives. In fact it is contemporary practice, too. Let us be very clear about this. This is not something that happened 10, 15, 20 or 30 years ago; this is real today. I just think this is such an important bill for us and such an important opportunity for the Parliament to stand in unity and say, ‘No, this is wrong. We are doing harm to people and we will not allow that to happen’.

I am thrilled to be a part of today’s conversation. As I said at the start of my contribution, this has been a long journey for me, but it has been a journey of a government that is prepared to put at the forefront of all of its considerations three fundamental things: do no harm, fairness is at the heart of this bill and equality drives this government every day. I commend the bill to the house.

Ms CUPPER (Mildura) (15:03): I rise today to speak on the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020. This bill does not exist in a vacuum. It did not arrive just to make life difficult for churches. It arrived because the abhorrent, dangerous, destructive and discredited practice of conversion still exists and is hurting people very badly. Its forms might be more subtle than they used to be, but in many ways that just makes them more insidious.

The church is indignant, and I have received lots of emails. They say it is a matter of religious freedom, but I say to the church: with all due respect, you are free to do a lot of things, but you are not free to hurt people. That is where broader society draws a line, and the fact you would attempt to claim that freedom is disturbing. Forgive the LGBTI community from being a little bit sceptical about your so-called genuine concern for their welfare when it is you that is teaching the shame. Teaching and reinforcing shame about being gay or trans, for example, is not an act of care but contempt—contempt that has been the cause of untold suffering for our LGBTI community through the generations.

When I think of that suffering and the depth of that shame I think of Alan Turing, the brilliant man who in the 1940s invented the world’s first computer, broke the German Enigma code and helped the Allies win the war. This man literally saved the world, yet after the war he was targeted, bullied, charged, convicted and humiliated for his sexuality by his own country, and in 1954 he committed suicide. The man who literally saved the Western democratic world took his own life because of hate—because his country hated him. I think of the many young men who fell victim to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s who died alone in hospital because their families were too ashamed or appalled to visit them. As a mother of a young boy I cannot fathom a hate or a shame so strong it would override my instinct to be with my dying child. Hate is taught. Heterosexual people are not seeking help for their sexual preference. They do not feel inner turmoil. They do not feel a crushing sense of shame that necessitates professional or pastoral counselling, because shame is taught.

Churches have the potential to do much good in society—obviously they do—yet in too many cases and against all reason they persist with this baffling attachment to homophobia. I understand the Bible opposes homosexuality, but it also contains hundreds of other anachronisms that have been dropped from modern teachings—the promotion of slavery, the stigma of menstruation, the general submission of women, arbitrary cruelty to children, enthusiasm for public stoning. The church can adjust and evolve its teachings. It has done that many times. So why cling to this anachronism? Why cling to an anachronism that leads to bigotry, shame, hate, sadness, suicide and even murder? If only our church leaders saw fit to consign their anti-gay positions to that same dustbin of history, the world would be a much better place.

In one email to my office asking me to vote against this legislation it was suggested that the government is a poor parent. A quick glance at history suggests the church is not much better. Teaching kids they will perish in hell for their sexuality is no recipe for a healthy, happy, well-adjusted childhood and adolescence. Teaching children that their gender diversity is wrong, unnatural and something to be cured against all credible social and medical science is not good parenting. The facts are that these teachings are far more likely to cause kids to cut and kill themselves than change their sexuality or gender identity. That is not good parenting. It is appalling and it is abhorrent.

Take away the mechanisms that teach hate and shame and you take away the turmoil that you claim you want to fix. It is the bigotry that needs the therapy. It is the bigotry that is broken. Back in the 1950s the social machinery that promoted and perpetuated bigotry was everywhere; it was all pervasive. It was in schools, families, workplaces, sporting institutions and churches. It was inescapable. Society was incubated in the idea that homosexuality was inherently wrong and that heterosexuality was inherently right. This was an entirely artificial construct. It was totally unnecessary and it was highly destructive. For the most part most of those engine rooms for bigotry have undertaken a complete 180. Families, schools, workplaces, sporting clubs, community groups and corporations widely promote inclusion in line with increasingly sophisticated evidence-based understandings of sexuality and gender identity.

The Mallee, a region once assumed to be conservative in every way, has largely embraced gender and sexual diversity as part of the infinite diversity of humanity. In 2016 the Mallee electorate voted yes to marriage equality. We have a thriving community of LGBTIQ people and allies, as expressed loudly and proudly through groups like Mallee Pride and Alphabet Soup. There are rainbow stickers all over our CBD and local schools have a strong record in validating and nurturing our LGBTIQ students. The message is very clear in our region: it is okay to be gay, trans, bi—whatever you want. There is nothing wrong with you.

It is time our churches got on board too. We need them to and we want them to. Religion can be an enormous source of comfort and support in a complicated and unpredictable world. It can be a force for good. I hope this bill today inspires some introspection. In the meantime I dedicate my speech today to Mallee Pride and Alphabet Soup. I see your diversity in all its forms. You are not just LGBTIQ but you are a million other things. You come from different cultures and backgrounds. You are brotherboys and sistergirls. You are strong, you are smart, you are resilient. You inspire me every day, and I hope this bill and hopefully this legislation one day gives you hope for a brighter, safer future.

Ms ADDISON (Wendouree) (15:09): Thank you very much, Acting Speaker Taylor. It is lovely to see you in the chair today. I think it is the first time I have spoken with you in the chair, so well done. You are doing a very good job. I have been watching. It is great.

Like so many of my colleagues and people on our side of the house, I am so proud to support this important legislation that will outlaw damaging LGBTIQ+ conversion practices, the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020. Change or suppression practices, also known as conversion practices or conversion therapy—it is time for them to go. We need to ban these terrible, terrible practices that have such terrible outcomes for members of our community and for our fellow Victorians. I stand with the LGBTIQ+ community in support of this bill to ban such practices and recognise the decades of struggle, protest and campaigning to end discrimination, to end hate, to end bigotry and to fight for equality.

Like the Minister for Housing I too would like to recognise my dear friend the member for Burwood’s contribution to this legislation today. To share his struggles and his personal story is truly admirable, and I send my absolute heartfelt love to all of the Fowles family. They are such a great family. There is so much love in that family, and I really hope that this journey is one that you feel very supported on, not only by all your friends and family but by the whole community.

This legislation is another step towards destigmatising issues of homosexuality and gender fluidity in Victoria. By introducing this bill, the Andrews Labor government is fulfilling our commitment to govern for all Victorians and to ensure equality for all Victorians. I believe that this legislation and others will reduce the suicides, family violence, depression, anxiety, relationship breakdowns and social isolation felt by many members of the LGBTIQ+ community by us showing through leadership that all Victorians deserve to be respected and valued for who they are. I wholeheartedly believe that everyone should be respected and accepted for who they are, be able to be true to themselves and be supported in how they identify.

The notion that someone can be or needs to be cured or fixed from being lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or queer is wrong. I am blessed to have many friends who are LGBTIQ+. I have a dear aunt who is LGBTIQ+. I have taught many students who are LGBTIQ+, and I have worked with many people who are LGBTIQ+. Both our daughters have been baptised in the Catholic Church, and both of their godfathers are gay. Stephen Dawson and David Imber are both wonderful men whom my husband, Mike, and I both admire. Being LGBTIQ+ is not a disease that needs to be cured, and people who are LGBTIQ+ are not broken and do not need to be fixed. I am supporting this legislation because by banning suppression we will protect people from harm and put an end to extreme practices that can be damaging, dangerous and dehumanising.

I thank the Attorney-General and the Minister for Equality for the work that has gone into this bill and welcome the opportunity for us to have this discussion. They are true champions of equality in this government and in the state alongside our Premier. It said so much when the Premier came into the chamber earlier today to talk about this issue that he says is so significant for our state, holding a mirror up to who we want to be and who we are and coming in and talking about his values and sharing them with us. That was very, very great to see. We are continuing to put laws in place that will protect vulnerable Victorians and to ensure everyone who lives in our great state can feel safe and supported in our community. And unlike the opposition, we are united on this issue. We do not need to delay the vote. For the Andrews Labor government, equality is not negotiable.

I have listened very hard to a lot of the contributions today from members of the Liberal Party, and I would particularly like to single out the member for Gippsland South for his contribution to this debate. Thank you for sharing Patrick’s story and for your empathy and compassion. I was very moved by your contribution. It has also been great to hear from the member for Tarneit, who made a great contribution as well, as did the member for Carrum, and thank you to the member for Yan Yean for sharing her story about her son Blake coming out and how he has been loved and supported through his journey as well.

So there is no doubt that the Andrews Labor government is governing for all Victorians, and this can be seen in our strong support for the LGBTIQ+ community. We created the first equality portfolio, the first Minister for Equality, with a record resourcing of $61 million. We know that equality is not negotiable, and we are living our politics. We are living our values. We appointed the first-ever gender and sexuality commissioner. We created a task force to advise the government on LGBTIQ+ issues. We have rolled out the first-ever LGBTIQ+ community grants program, supporting organisations right across Victoria to do important work. The Premier delivered a historic state apology to those convicted under prejudiced laws against homosexual acts. We now have adoption equality in Victoria. We are expanding our health system so that trans and gender-diverse Victorians and their families can get the timely support they need, and we certainly heard about this from the member for Burwood. We have passed legislation that allows transgender Victorians to change their birth certificates to reflect who they truly are. And we are investing in our next generation through the first-ever LGBTIQ+ leadership programs. All of this stuff matters. It matters because it says to people, ‘We trust you, we value you, we love you and you are important Victorians’.

I would sincerely like to thank the people of Wendouree who have contacted me to express their views on this legislation, those for and against the bill. I genuinely welcome hearing from constituents on issues and encourage all constituents to engage with me about their viewpoints. I have received correspondence from supporters and opponents of this legislation and have taken the time to consider their arguments, their stories, their concerns and their opinion.

I note that our government has consulted widely on this legislation over many years. The Attorney-General and the Minister for Equality have worked closely with survivors, LGBTIQ organisations and religious organisations on the legislation to make sure that it is effective in stamping out offensive and repugnant change and suppression practices once and for all. I particularly want to thank the survivors who have shared their stories and their trauma to inform us in developing this legislation. Our government has considered the feedback and has now developed legislation that will ban these practices for good.

So what does this bill do? This bill will denounce and make change or suppression practices a crime by targeting anyone engaged in change or suppression practices which cause injury or serious injury. It will make it a crime to advertise change or suppression practices, and it will be illegal to remove someone from Victoria for the purpose of subjecting them to change or suppression practices which cause injury elsewhere, whether it is interstate or international. This bill will also establish a civil response scheme within the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission to promote understanding and compliance and resolve allegations that fall short of the criminal standard through education.

I also support this bill because it is an issue of human rights. Under the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 every person in Victoria has the right to enjoy their human rights without discrimination; they are equal before the law, they are entitled to equal protection of the law without discrimination and they have the right to equal and effective protection against discrimination. This includes freedom from discrimination based on sexuality and gender identity. So this bill amends the Equal Opportunity Act to update definitions of ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ in line with the current usage and add sex characteristics as a protected attribute from discrimination to protect intersex Victorians.

So whilst there has been a lot of scaremongering on this, this bill is not going to ban or affect prayer or religious teachings in schools, homes or religious institutions unless that activity is directed at specific individuals with the intention of changing or suppressing someone’s sexuality. I genuinely support this bill, and I commend it to the house.

Mr NEWBURY (Brighton) (15:20): I rise to make a brief contribution on the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020. I want to start by saying directly to my community that I will stand up for your equality, even when it is difficult. When you strip away this bill to its core purpose, that is what this bill is about—extending the principle of equality. Victoria expects equality of all our people, including those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender-diverse, intersex, queer, asexual and questioning. This bill mandates that equality in law again. That is important because we must never forget that the LGBTIQ community has suffered historical discrimination, discrimination at law and daily discrimination through social norms. That discrimination ensured not only lesser rights but lesser treatment through shunning and through shaming. Sadly, discrimination based on sexuality is still a real part of the lives of the LGBTI community. This bill in principle seeks to address that. Put simply, the bill will make it unlawful to terrorise a person because of their sexuality. This bill will make it clear that our community does not condone using fear to repress a person’s true self.

There should be no debate on whether a person should be judged based on who they love—no debate. I did not enter this place to oppose those principles in this bill. And frankly my community should not forgive me if I opposed those principles. In truth, these principles are at the core of what my party, the Liberal Party, stands for: deference to the individual over the collective and an unwavering commitment to an individual’s rights and freedoms. It is because of those principles that I am on my feet today—because I want my community to know that I have an unwavering commitment to them and to their equality, regardless of their defining characteristics, be it gender, race, religion or sexuality.

There are some who are concerned that the Labor Party has politicised the bill by including other subject matter and that the bill is poorly drafted. Those two assessments are right. But when considering the bill in totality, we must weigh up whether those issues outweigh the principle and purpose. My community is contemporary, and it is modern. My community would expect the opposition to set out our concerns about the bill, which we have done, but my community would also expect me to recognise that the principle of equality outweighs those concerns and to ensure that the group of people in our community who suffer discrimination daily are provided protections at law.

I say to the religious community, as a person who has faith, I have profound respect for your place in our society. We in this chamber have all seen the transformative good and comfort that the faith community provides both through public works and programs and pastorally in private. I will always be a voice for the good work of our faith community and stand with you as you perform your good deeds. At its core religion is about love—a love for your God, however you describe that God, and God’s love for all things, a love that does not discriminate. God’s love, like our love for our neighbour, is not conditional. My God would not tolerate his name being used to repress a person’s true self, nor should this Parliament.

You cannot pray gay away. Every individual must be supported in being who they are without question and without reservation. And though it has been argued that the law should accept the freedom to be a bigot, the law must never allow the freedom to discriminate or the freedom to coerce. Again, I say to my community, I stand here today for your equality, and I always will.

Mr HALSE (Ringwood) (15:25): Can I first say that it is a pleasure to be speaking on this bill and to hear some of the best of this chamber to finish the parliamentary year. I congratulate the member for Brighton for his contribution just then and other members of the opposition who have made significant contributions this afternoon that have been profound and very moving. I am somewhat reluctant to go over the notes that I prepared earlier because we have had so many fine contributions in this place this afternoon. I want to reference some of those before I get to some points that I want to make briefly. I might make a truncated contribution to this bill.

I do want to reference the member for Cranbourne and her contribution and her deep sense of faith but her deep sense of social justice and the way in which that intersects with her faith and that has informed her faith over many years. I stood with the member for Cranbourne in the rain during the marriage equality debates with a number of other people from the eastern suburbs for weeks on end to campaign for marriage equality laws a number of years ago now. It was a delight to join with her on that occasion, and her values remain true to this day. I would also like to congratulate the member for Burwood for his deeply personal contribution to this debate. It is interesting what you learn about people when they make personal contributions in this chamber and the struggles and the way in which he and his family have managed those within the context of family. He has noted that nothing could be more important in supporting those around us, young people in particular, to demonstrate love to those people and to make it really plain to them that they are accepted for who they are. It was also a pleasure to hear the Premier in this chamber this afternoon deliver an eloquent and powerful speech on this issue and the importance of equality to this government and how it is the centrepiece to the work that we do. This is not an addendum for this Labor government; it serves a core function of who we are, what we believe and what we want to see for our progressive Victorian state. Can I congratulate also the member for Wendouree for her recent contribution as well.

I do not want to go into too much of the technical detail of the bill, but I did just want to talk about the faith-based community. I profess a faith myself. I am the son of two ministers. My mother has a doctorate in theology; my sister is a theologian, human rights lawyer and social worker; and my father is a minister and theologian. I have grown up in the church and I have been in and around the faith-based community and profess a faith myself. It is interesting that being in this role I have to a certain degree rediscovered a sense of faith which I did not expect to do, but there is something about the nature of politics that might make you do that. But I profess a faith, and the lessons that I have learned and the lessons that I take from that faith are those of love, acceptance, compassion, understanding and community—and in many respects that is what we are talking about here. I am interested that the title of the bill here is Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020. I think of faith in the context of love, solidarity and liberation. We should always seek to liberate people from those pains that they feel and those shackles that we as a community, that we as a society often impose upon people, often unfairly.

The damage that is done particularly to young people from the LGBTIQ community is really significant, and I have seen it firsthand. I have been to church camps as a 15- and 16-year-old, a 14-year-old. I shuffled off for a few days of Christian fellowship and sat within the tutelage of ministers and pastors who preached a particular brand of faith that alienates people, that makes people confused, that makes people feel belittled and that can cause—and causes—tremendous mental health and psychological stress to people. I have seen people in my own life, in my own journey, who have grappled with this so significantly that it has taken them a decade or longer to get over that early imposition of a particular church-based teaching that they have been exposed to. So I want to send my solidarity to those people. There are countless people that I know who have been affected. There are countless people that have been spoken about in the context of this contribution—the member for Mildura had a wonderful contribution as well—who have been permanently scarred and damaged by this conversion therapy process.

But I do not want to focus so much on just the negative, because I know that there are some brilliant churches in my community that open their doors and accept people with love and acceptance, and they understand that people have different journeys in life and that their own identity and their own sexuality is for them to determine and decide. So I want to thank those church communities in my electorate who are very open and welcoming and supporting. They provide a place of community for people to find acceptance and belonging.

I did say I was going to truncate my comments a little bit, but I am going on. I often think of a passage of Scripture which is at the end of Matthew—I am reluctant to be too religious at this point, but it is a particular issue for the church community and they should be provided a sense of autonomy and freedom to practise their faith in a way which they feel is appropriate and to preach their universal truths—and for those of you who are not religious, you might not know it. But there is a passage where a figure is asked, ‘When I was sick, I was in prison, I was hungry and I was in need of comfort did you come and visit me? What did you do?’. And the response was, ‘When did we see you in these things? Lord, when did we see you in these situations?’. And the response from the historical figure of Jesus is, ‘Whenever you saw anyone in those positions, that was me; you saw me in that’. That is a very confounding and confusing, theologically, passage of Scripture. But if we extend that, we can extend that to the LGBTIQ community: ‘We saw you excluded; we saw you forgotten. We saw you in situations of tremendous hardship’ and, ‘You did it to them; you are doing it to me as well’. So I want to end on that and say that it was a pleasure to speak on this bill.

Ms SETTLE (Buninyong) (15:35): It really has been an extraordinary day, listening to all the contributions. Of course I am very pleased to rise to speak as well in support of the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020, but I would like to echo the opening lines of the member for Ringwood, that really I think we have seen some of the best of Parliament today. Certainly I was, along with many of us, very, very moved by the member for Gippsland South’s contribution; you could hear and see his own awakening and awareness, and it was quite moving to see. Also the member from Brighton strongly put forward his belief in equality. So it has been a fantastic day in this Parliament to see us all so united for equality. Of course from the contributions from my own side—again I echo the words of the member for Ringwood—I have learned a little bit more about all of my colleagues today in listening to this debate. Certainly, along with others, the member for Burwood gave an incredibly personal and moving account. I think all of us in this house have great love and affection for him and his family and that story.

It was interesting to hear the Minister for Housing talk about what a long journey it had been for him in terms of government to get to this point in equality. I know for myself that that is very, very true. In my opening speech, when I first started in Parliament, I talked about the years in the 1980s when I worked for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. I was a 25-year-old and working on their media. It was interesting at the time—and I am a straight woman—because people would say, ‘Why are you so committed to this cause, to the Mardi Gras cause?’. It was just so incredibly simple: it was the absolute right to love whoever you choose to love. To me it was just something that was absolutely worth fighting for.

Interestingly my story and relationship actually goes back much, much further. I do have permission to talk about this. When I was just 11 years old I moved to Castlemaine in Victoria, and I made an instant friend, Michael. I am delighted to say that now, some 40 or 50 years later, Michael and I are still bosom buddies. He lives around the corner from me and we see each other daily, virtually. So he is quite literally my best friend. This is not one of those, ‘I have a friend who is gay’; he is quite literally my oldest and dearest friend. We grew up in the 1970s in Castlemaine. Of course Castlemaine today is a very different place to what it was in the 70s. At that stage it really was a small rural country town. Michael and I literally spent our weekends running from people who wanted to beat him up. I will use parliamentary privilege. There was a particular man called Michael Gwynne who used to spend his weekends trying to find Michael just to beat him up because he thought he was gay. At that stage Michael had not come out. We were very close, and we spent our days reading Vogue magazines and talking about how we were going to travel the world and ride through Paris in a sports car. I got to 19 or so and I did just that. I packed my bags and went off to Europe, and yes, I did do the Marianne Faithfull and drive through Paris in a sports car. Michael did not.

When I was in my mid-20s I used to think about it. I thought, ‘Why didn’t he do all of the things that we dreamed about doing?’, and I came to understand it. I hate this word ‘journey’, but we all have different journeys in our lives, and Michael’s journey was completely around his sexuality. He had been so traumatised by those years in Castlemaine that for him it was about a journey of accepting himself. I am really pleased to say that Michael met Greg, the gorgeous Greg, and they have been together for about 35 years now. That was Michael’s journey—to accept himself. He is completely estranged from his family. He stopped speaking to his father when he heard his father training his nephew to say the word ‘faggot’. That was the point that Michael walked out and never went back.

But the kind of brutalising experience that he went through is akin to what people are put through through conversion therapy. To be told by anyone that who you are at your very core is wrong or bad is just obscene. We need all of us to be able to love ourselves. It is a hard enough battle, I think, that we all go through to learn to love ourselves, and if you are faced with a community that condemns who you are at your very soul it is an incredibly difficult road to travel.

This bill for me is very important. As other people have said, what it does beyond the technical side of the bill is send that message loud and clear to everybody out there. I have got two teenage boys, and thankfully I am that household all of the friends come home to. I have listened to a lot of them talk about their sexuality and have watched them grow and watched them think about who they are. It is a beautiful, beautiful thing to see them blossom and become themselves. That anyone could be denied that is abhorrent.

Like others in the house I have received quite a bit of correspondence around this bill. Look, what I would say to people, a lot of whom have come from the faith-based organisations, is not to be fearful of this bill. I notice in the reasoned amendment from the other side that they discuss that you should be able to seek assistance. But it is very, very clear in this bill that you have to intend to change. There is not an issue with talking to someone about your faith’s position on sexuality; it is the intention to try and change someone. I think all of us in this house today have talked about how important it is that someone should not feel the need to change you. The member for Brighton talked about the importance for him of individualism, and that stands at the centre of that. What I would say very respectfully to people of faith is please have a look at this bill. Look at this bill closely. In no way is it intended to restrict your rights. It is restricting an intention to try and change someone, an intention in my opinion to belittle them, to break down their very spirit and their very core.

So I would, as I said, ask people of faith to look closely at the bill and understand what we are trying to do here. As quite a few on my side have said, this government has worked long and hard in the space of equality, and that makes me incredibly proud. On one of the Mardi Gras days I did deliver my inaugural speech. I think it was actually the Mardi Gras days that politicised me. That is the first time that I thought, ‘I’m going to get out there and I’m going to fight for something’. Really I am here today because of that, and I could not be prouder to be part of a government like this that has made such a deep commitment to equality. As the member for Wendouree said, to have the Premier in here to speak on this bill just shows the depth of commitment—and of course to have the Minister for Housing talk about the many, many years that he and Mr Hulls worked on policies to try and create an equal and fair society for us all. It is absolutely at the core of all of our Labor values—that sense of fairness and equality—and this bill is another step in that progression.

But in these last few minutes I guess what I would like to say to anybody out there is know that this government has your back; know that we support you, we see you and we believe in you. You are part of our community. The LGBTQI community in Ballarat is incredibly strong, and I love them to bits. Reach out to people and never, ever, ever feel you need to change. We support you, and this bill supports you. No-one can ever make you change what you feel deep in your heart, and that is around who you love, who you want to spend your life with. That is your choice, nobody else’s. I commend this bill to the house.

Mr McGHIE (Melton) (15:45): I rise today to contribute to the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020. I want to thank the Attorney-General and her office for once again bringing legislation into this house that continues to make Victoria a more fair and equitable state for all citizens. During my short time as the member for Melton I have been truly touched by the many individuals, families and organisations that have sought me out to discuss with me their concerns around their experiences of LGBTIQ or supporting their loved ones. It still seems astonishing to me that so many people reach out to me, a stranger in their lives, to raise with me their experiences and concerns to seek assistance. In 2020 we should not have to give one second of a thought about anyone’s identity or sexuality. People are who they are; it should not need justification or explanation. The need of so many of the individuals who reach out to me is an unfortunate testament that the LGBTIQ community still experiences unnecessary hurt and pain. All too frequently that hurt and pain comes from those who should be caring for and loving them.

Young people in particular are at risk of severe mental and physical harm as they develop through their formative years. It is a tragedy that often those who are closest to them are those causing that harm. It may be through good intentions; however, the pain and damage that can be caused is long term. We know all too well that the LGBTIQ community suffer higher levels of mental health concerns. The National LGBTI Health Alliance reports that LGBTIQ young people are five times more likely to attempt suicide than their peers. Transgender people are 11 times more likely to attempt suicide. It is a tragedy. Almost 50 per cent of trans and gender diverse youth have attempted suicide.

Also, a study in the US indicates that suicide attempts for LGBTIQ individuals are higher again if they are members of a faith community. In particular, some faith practices have felt the need to fix something that is not broken. The risk to the LGBTIQ community in particular is high. A young person in their formative years often has no choice in where they live and how their family spends their time or what faith community they belong to. Sadly, to reject a faith community or their teachings might come with consequences, financially, physically and mentally. Sometimes an individual might not want to be involved with a faith community. Sometimes they desperately do. A basic human instinct is to be wanted and accepted, to find a place to belong. Faith communities can be a social and cultural connection for people just as much as a belief system.

I would like to take a moment to acknowledge many faith communities and groups that have reached out to me in support of this bill. There are many welcoming and accepting faith communities ministering in an accepting and compassionate way. I would like to acknowledge and thank the 10 multifaith, multicultural LGBTIQ individuals who wrote to me in support of this bill, and I am sure everyone in this house received their letter. I would like to read to you, with their permission, some extracts from their letter. I think it is important to do so:

Many of our own have suffered in silence, unable to speak for fear of bringing shame to their families and communities, and still live with the life-long trauma and dislocation caused by people who believe them to be sick, diseased and in need of ‘fixing’, ‘curing’ or ‘changing’.

…

We have heard and documented the accounts of people who have been taken to doctors and religious leaders to be ‘cured’. Parents who have pulled their children out of school and taken them to places of worship, or even overseas, in search of change.

Religious leaders of different faiths that have told us that homosexuality is a ‘disease’ needing a ‘cure’ and that it is not indigenous to our communities and cultures. They have told us that they would refer people to ‘appropriate’ medical organisations to deal with their ‘problem’, and that they have had repeated contact with people whose ‘desires’ they have tried to change or suppress.

Community and welfare workers have reported to us families that have attempted to ‘fix’ such ‘problems’ within their families. And we’ve heard community leaders espouse violence, understood as the controlling of someone’s life, as a ‘way for correction’.

And it goes on:

But we have also heard accounts of people who have been walked into mosques after coming out to Sheikhs and Christian leaders who have opened their church doors to gays and lesbians, despite the personal repercussions to themselves.

It is beyond time for this senseless damage to people to stop. We need laws that build understanding through processes that bring people and communities together. This Bill overwhelmingly does that, criminalising the most egregious forms of conversion practices that cause injury while providing pathways for voluntary facilitation and investigations when conduct is serious or systematic.

This Bill provides an important foundation towards building understanding for LGBTIQ+ people from multicultural backgrounds with others within their communities, and sends an important message in protecting people from harm. It affirms that all people should be free to belong as members of their faith and multicultural communities, and as Victorians.

I also received a letter from Switchboard—Switchboard Victoria is an LGBTIQ community-controlled organisation that has been supporting the mental health of Victorians since 1991—and I dare say every other member received their letter. CEO Joe Ball wrote:

Every day in our services at Switchboard we talk to LGBTIQA+ Victorians who are struggling, regularly we hear about the effects when an individual is rejected by their family, community, or faith. We know that supportive families and communities will drive down the suicide and family violence rates for LGBTIQA+ individuals. Something that I know you are committed to addressing.

…

At Switchboard we know that many LGBTIQA+ individuals are practicing people of faith, and every day we talk to people in our services who want to find affirming churches and places of worship. We are pleased to say that every year we are hearing about more and more religious denominations, faiths and places of worship that have become safe and inclusive places for the LGBTIQA+ community. Conversion practices are only supported by a tiny, but vociferous, fraction of religious people in Victoria and by no LGBTIQA+ organisations or leaders.

I would like to thank all those who wrote in support of this bill. Victoria is an accepting and progressive state. This bill continues to send the message to everyone that there is nothing broken about LGBTIQ individuals that needs to be fixed. Practices that place Victorians in danger, trying to convert or suppress their fundamental nature, are not acceptable and need to cease.

I have of course received much correspondence from those against this bill. I do not wish to dwell too much on this, but I would like to make the following points: much of their correspondence has only confirmed to me the need for this bill. Many of the writers expressed to me that they should be permitted to manage these issues in their communities. I say to these writers: we are their community too. To any person struggling or in the LGBTIQ community, we are your community too. You are loved and we accept you. Victoria has no place for these practices and no place for discrimination.

This bill recognises that change or suppression practices are false and deceptive and are seriously harmful acts. This bill quite rightly aims to eliminate change or suppression practices in Victoria. The bill aims to clearly communicate that change or suppression practices are not tolerated or supported by the Victorian community in any form. Change or suppression practices do not work. It does not include supportive medical and psychological treatment that is in line with professional standards. It has no basis in medical or psychological principles. It is counterproductive, starting from a false start that there is something that is broken that needs to be fixed. There is nothing broken about someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. All that these practices do is lead to broken individuals, harmed by the communities and practices that claim to want to help them.

A minister of religion in my constituency mentioned to me that we are all made in the image of God; to seek to convert another’s identity is to seek to suppress God in the other. I understand that in the consultation on this bill many survivors of harmful conversion practices contributed to this bill. I would like to thank them and their work to ensure that these harmful practices are consigned to history. I also would like to thank the many organisations that support LGBTIQ people and congratulate the many faith communities that have been inclusive and supportive of all Victorians. I wholeheartedly support this bill, and I commend the bill to the house.

Mr HAMER (Box Hill) (15:54): I too rise to speak on the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020. I would also like to start my contribution by acknowledging all of the members who have preceded my contribution today, from both sides. I think, as the member for Ringwood pointed out, it has probably shown one of the best days of the Parliament in my two years here, particularly with the personal stories that have been shared by members from both sides of the house.

As has been referred to previously, this bill in effect bans practices that seek to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. And it is sometimes and has previously been called ‘conversion therapy’, but such a description affords the practice far too much credibility. The conduct must be directed at an individual and directed on the basis of the victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity, and a person engaging in the attempt must intend to change or suppress or induce that person to change or suppress their sexual orientation or gender identity. And in so doing the bill affirms that Victorians who are same-sex attracted or gender diverse have never been broken and do not need to be fixed.

The bill sets up a division within the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission to support survivors and inform the public about the ban, and the commission will be empowered to undertake investigations where there is evidence that systemic conversion practices are taking place. This is an important function, no matter who is carrying out the practice, because any attempt to move these destructive practices underground must be addressed. The conduct that has been reported is deplorable, and the penalties for offending are significant for that reason.

As has been referenced by many members who have gone before me today, the presentation of this bill to Parliament has generated significant correspondence from the Victorian community, including those in my local electorate. I want to thank those who have taken the time to write to me personally, including those who do not support the bill, but I am particularly grateful to those who have reached out with their own personal experiences of suppression practices and know the harm that they cause and have voiced their support for the bill. The stories of those voices, in my view, significantly outweigh the concerns that this bill is somehow an affront to freedom of religion or freedom of speech. The stories that they share are of horror and tragedy; there is no other way to describe them. The practices have destroyed lives, changed lives for the worse and at times taken lives. Each and every one of these people deserved a chance to lead a successful, productive and meaningful life. In some cases they were cruelly robbed of that chance, in some cases by the people who are now the loudest voices against change.

I wanted to focus a bit on the element of freedom of speech that has attracted some of the attention. The protection of others from harm is widely accepted, and should be accepted, as a limitation of this right. There is no right to rob a person of their dignity by telling them that a part of who they are needs fixing when it was never broken. Those who purport to be able to fix same-sex attracted or gender-diverse people should not hide behind this important right to get away with conduct that, by any measure, destroys and sometimes ends life.

Obviously a very large focus of this bill and the correspondence relating to this bill is in relation to religious freedoms and what can and cannot occur both during prayer and at faith-based schools, and it should be made clear, as was made clear in the second-reading speech, that people of faith or people of no faith at all can continue to express their views on policy matters relating to same-sex attracted or gender-diverse individuals. Whether they do so in a chapel, a church or a synagogue or on a street corner or in their private home is immaterial.

As I said at the outset, it is very specific in terms of what would constitute contravention of the bill. It is directing the practice for the purpose of changing or suppressing an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The bill specifically rules out what is not considered a suppression practice. This is about where you provide a supporting environment that provides acceptance, support or understanding of a person or that facilitates a person’s coping skills, social support or identity exploration and development. This can be in circumstances where you are seeking pastoral care, even if the religious leader does not hold the same views but is still providing an accepting environment where that person can come to seek solace or guidance but is not specifically being directed to take a particular position or to adopt certain practices that we know will be harmful to that individual. When I think about prayer—and in my own case and my own religion—it is a deeply personal matter. It is a personal matter between the individual, particularly in monotheistic religions such as Judaism, and God. It is not between the individual and their spiritual leader; it is with the individual. It is not for that spiritual leader to be directing that individual to take on practices and direct practices that go to the harm of the individual who is seeking guidance or counselling.

I am also troubled by some of the claims that talk about the prevention of religious schools from teaching their faith. Faith-based schools play a special and important role in our community, and they will continue to do so. The teaching of religious history and the understanding and contemporary adoption of these religious precepts continue under this bill. They can continue to teach the beliefs of that faith and its contemporary adoption of present-day public policy matters. Parents who make the choice to send their kids to a faith-based school make that choice for a variety of reasons, and those who do so to instil in their children an understanding of a particular faith should have absolutely nothing to fear from this bill. This bill is not about putting a government monitor or a government assessor in a religious classroom, but it will give the students at every school the dignity that they deserve to lead a happy life. It will ban referrals to practices that only cause grief and harm to individuals, and those protections should be afforded to students at every school. It is silent on who is administratively responsible for a school—whether it is a church school, a state school or other religious school—because dignity ought not to stop at the door of a particular school because it is run by a particular organisation.

This bill is a very important bill, and my thoughts particularly go out to all of those individuals who have suffered so much at the hands of treatments and practices that have been shown not only to not work but to be truly harmful to those individuals. It has left them with a lifetime legacy, and sometimes, as has been said, it has created the situation where individuals have self-harmed and worse. My thoughts in this bill and in this contribution are with all those individuals, and it is because these practices are so harmful and destructive that this is a critical bill for this current Parliament. I commend the bill to the house.

Mr DIMOPOULOS (Oakleigh) (16:05): I make many contributions in this Parliament, and those contributions are guided by my values, my understanding, my community’s views and the commitments of the government that I am a proud member of. I stand up for gender equality, I stand up for the rights of children, I stand up for the rights of people living with a disability and I stand up for people of all cultural and faith backgrounds, but when it comes to standing up for myself, I still find it difficult. I do it with some trepidation—me, someone who has an incredibly loving and supportive family and partner, someone who is a member of Parliament and a member of the government whose head has stood up for the LGBTIQ community in a way that is unprecedented, in a way that makes me enormously proud of him as a friend, a colleague and a leader. With that context, I still feel, speaking on bills like this, a rising sense of trepidation. Hence I am referring to notes heavily in this contribution.

This is not only because bills like this hit at the very core of my humanity but because gay men like me and all Victorians who identify with the queer community have been told for years, for most of our lives, that there is something wrong and disgusting about our humanity—not part of our humanity, our entire humanity. You cannot remove someone’s sexuality and say it is wrong and preserve the integrity of the rest of that person’s humanity. It is all one. It is all an integral whole. It is this very experience and the manifestation of that experience that we are trying to protect Victorians from. You do not need a change or suppression practice when there is no case for change. By the time you have reached that stage of developing or suggesting a change or suppression, you have already caused damage to a person’s sense of being, their sense of integrity and their sense of self-respect. As the member for Burwood said, sexuality or gender identity is difficult enough to deal with as a young person or at any age, without the added pressure of the chorus of bigoted voices with gratuitous advice about those identities.

As the member for Mildura said, this bill did not arrive in a vacuum to hurt churches. It comes to the floor of this Parliament on the back of the pain, the suffering and the death through suicide of too many LGBTIQ Victorians, as many people on this side of the chamber have talked about, and the other. The argument about whether this is an appropriate balance between faith and protecting LGBTIQ Victorians is a false dichotomy. My understanding of faith is that it is about love and acceptance, not seeking to change anyone. But to church leaders who may feel that this is a restriction on their rights to teach their faith, do not fear; it is not. People who want to muddy the waters about what this is about are spreading fear about religious freedoms. This is not about faith. This is about protecting people from what is and what should always have been a criminal offence—the causing of serious injury. Faith leaders and parents can still teach their parishioners and children their faith teachings. What they cannot do is force or compel someone to undergo counselling or some therapy to change their sexuality or gender identity, and this is because it does untold damage. It causes untold and irreparable harm. I have never felt accepted at my church, but I have a fundamental respect for the good people across churches and places of worship everywhere and I respect and will fight for their rights—but this is not their right. Most good church people know that this is not their right.

Our sense of ourselves as children and adolescents is so fragile. One word in a group conversation not even directed at us can have lasting impacts, let alone change and suppression strategies directed at individuals—horrendous outcomes. I was going to make a bit of a different contribution on this bill today. I was going to come in and talk passionately about why it is important, but I was not going to share personal reflections. I have shared personal reflections before in this chamber on adoption equality, on expunging historical criminal convictions for gay men and on some other important reforms, but it always takes it out of you. After hearing the Premier’s contribution, I felt encouraged to share personal reflections, because those stories are the ones that do shift people.

The Premier sharing his conversation with a nurse that he met during the pandemic and the nurse self-censoring the gender of their partner—I felt he was talking directly to me. I could not count the number of Monday morning tearoom conversations in workplaces over the last 25 years when my answer to this simple question, ‘Did you get up to much on the weekend?’, would be ‘No, it was a quiet one’ or just ‘I caught up with a couple of friends’—using the plural ‘friends’ rather than ‘friend’, lest that invite questions about who this friend is. I became an expert at avoiding gender pronouns or avoiding those conversations altogether. I was self-censoring all right. But not sharing your weekend with your colleagues or being nervous about writing ‘partner’ next to the question at the doctor’s reception about the relationship between you and the person you have just identified as your next of kin or grimacing a little when ordering or glancing around the restaurant when the waiter opens a bottle of champagne for just the two of you and you sneak in a kiss across the table knowing that there may be judgements made by other patrons or staff—all that is not all there is to this. It is only the start.

It is the smallest messages you send yourself about who you are and how that is not okay. That is where the real damage happens—the damage to your confidence, the damage to your spirit and the damage to the relationships with the people you love, with those you have lied to, and the lost opportunity for the things you could have achieved had you felt stronger, more confident and more worthy. That is what it is at stake here. It is big.

I am a very different person to what I was 20 years and even five years ago. Confidence to be yourself is a muscle you build up over time—all of us, not just LGBTI people, everybody—a muscle that is exercised every time you reaffirm it in conversations, every time you hear friends reaffirm it or the head of the government reaffirm it in such a powerful and compelling way. In fact every time the Premier and Catherine Andrews and the Minister for Equality and many of you in this chamber march in pride and lead the Pride March, every time my colleagues get up to speak with such sincerity and passion on bills just like this one, that makes my muscle stronger. Every time the brave Ms Shing in the other place stands up for our community, every time friends of mine ask about Yanni, my partner, and our plans in life together in the exact same way they would ask that question with any of their other friends, every time my family embraces Yanni, that muscle grows.

I want to thank the Attorney-General for her stewardship of this legislation. There need not be any more delays. The call on the other side of the chamber for us to park this bill while we do more consultation is a fig leaf for, ‘We believe in this in principle, but we are conflicted in practice’. Well, the Australian Labor Party, the Andrews government, is not conflicted. It believes in this in principle and in practice. There is no place for suppression or change practices in Victoria—no place at all. To all LGBTIQ people I say: you are loved, you are complete exactly as you are. I commend the bill to the house.

Ms CRUGNALE (Bass) (16:12:242:): I rise to speak to the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020, and I want to thank the member for Oakleigh for a very powerful contribution—personal. It is brave to reveal yourself—to take that mask off that you kind of wear for years and years and years. You are loved. Thank you very much for your contribution. The contributions for this whole debate have been really from the heart—from experiences. Everyone has a story to tell and an experience to bring to the chamber from all sides.

Try to imagine this: from your earliest memories you thought somehow you were different. You looked the same as everyone else on the outside, but somehow, somewhere, you felt different. Not a square peg in a round hole kind of different, just different. Your family loved you. You were happy at school, but this nagging inner voice never stopped. You reached adolescence, and while everyone else was talking about their latest love, you came to understand and hear what that voice had always been murmuring: ‘You’re attracted to someone of the same gender’. You trusted your family, so you finally told them what the voice was saying, and they were shocked. They did not know anyone else like this, and they were ashamed. They quietly sought counsel from people they trusted, and they learned about treatment that could help you. ‘No drugs’, they told you, ‘just talking to someone would cure you’. They knew someone who knew someone who had been cured. You loved your family. So despite desperately not wanting to go, you went to what they called conversion therapy. During the therapy you were told that you were broken, sinful, shameful and that you should feel guilty—guilty for what you felt, guilty for how you thought and guilty for the shame that you brought on your family. You felt guilty that your family had spent thousands of dollars to fix you, and that voice was still murmuring—and it did not stop no matter what you tried. Maybe you resorted to drugs, attempting to numb the memory of the photos that they made you look at. Maybe you tried to block out the pain of electric shocks with alcohol. Almost certainly you contemplated suicide.

You never forgot the feeling of the ice baths you endured; you never went swimming in cold water again, even on those stinking hot summer days when you went on a rare family outing to the beach. By the end of therapy, undoubtedly, you were broken. Maybe you walked away and never saw your family again. Maybe, just maybe, you found happiness with a partner who understood. If this was your story then I hope with all my heart that you did find peace and love.

Almost incomprehensibly, there are people who still believe that this torture has a place in our society. Despite the overwhelming evidence of significant and long-term harm, as reported by the Victorian health complaints commissioner, there are those who would see it continue. It was the commissioner’s recommendation that this government consider legislation to prohibit these practices, and I too want to thank the then-Minister for Health and current Attorney-General for referring the matter to the health complaints commissioner in 2018, and I want to thank Commissioner Cusack for her findings.

Let us be clear about the truth. These practices have no basis in medicine. Even if there was a basis in medicine that sexual orientation or gender identity could be changed, why would anyone advocate for it? What would give anybody the right to think that it should be even attempted? Under what circumstances would anybody think they had the right to interfere with another person’s sexuality? When the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020 is enacted it will send a very clear message to all Victorians that they can live their lives with pride and that their sexual orientation and gender identity is not broken and that it does not need to be fixed.

I also want to thank all of those who contributed to the consultation process in 2019. Over 600 online survey responses and 82 written submissions were received. There is one group of people I particularly want to thank as well. While 6.2 per cent of participants were those with a lived experience of this practice, 7.6 per cent identified as a friend of someone who had been subjected to this treatment. So I say thank you to those friends who saw the pain and wanted to have their voices heard. They saw the problem and wanted to be part of the solution.

Preparation for this legislation included face-to-face consultations with survivors, LGBTIQ+ support and advocacy organisations and religious groups. While views on the detail varied, a clear majority supported a ban on these practices. The bill’s wording acknowledges the feedback made during the consultation process. These practices are not therapeutic, and while ‘conversion’ may appear inappropriate, it is a term that people generally understand and hence appears in the title.

This bill is multifaceted as well, with civil and criminal components. Legislation will see a civil response scheme established within the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission to support survivors and address the harm they have endured. Importantly, this response will be shaped by the views of survivors. The civil response scheme will focus on education and facilitation, providing community education while ensuring that survivors receive support. Criminal offences will reflect the harm caused by these practices. Survivors who have been the victim of a crime will, if they wish to proceed, have this reported to Victoria Police and penalties will be scaled according to the level of injury.

The Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission will also be empowered to investigate reports of change or suppression practices. The commission will have the power to compel witnesses and the provision of documents. It will be able to issue compliance notices, and in the event of failure to comply it will be able to enforce compliance through VCAT and the courts.

The bill will create four criminal offences. The first two prohibit the engagement in change or suppression practice causing injury or serious injury to another person. The third prohibits taking someone from Victoria to subject them to this practice. The fourth is advertising change or suppression practice.

The bill is compatible with the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006. It also better protects our LGBTIQ+ Victorians from discrimination by amending the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 to update the definitions of ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ in line with current usage. The term ‘sex characteristics’ will be added to better protect intersex Victorians.

This bill also amends the Family Violence Protection Act 2008 and the Personal Safety Intervention Orders Act 2010. This bill makes it very clear that change or suppression practices may qualify as family violence or harassment and that those affected will have access to legislative protection.

There are some wonderful words as well in this bill: to recognise and—

… denounce … harm …

…

… affirm … orientation or … identity—

and acknowledge the practices—

… are deceptive and harmful …

These are words that hopefully help heal those living amongst us who have crumbled and been so hurt and traumatised by these barbaric practices. They are words that hopefully replace the words that survivors have used—words like ‘secrets’, ‘perverted’, ‘unforgivable’, ‘damaged’, ‘sin’, ‘hate’ and ‘hypocrisy’.

I want to finish by saying thank you again to the brave, brave people who have suffered or known and loved a victim, who were committed to bringing change and committed to ensuring that these practices are now outlawed and will not happen again in Victoria, and who were committed to a future and a society which embraces all of us and loves us for who we are. I commend the bill to the house.

Ms WARD (Eltham) (16:21): First of all I want to thank the member for Oakleigh for his incredibly heartfelt contribution today. It is fine for those of us who are not within the LGBTIQ community to stand up and support that community, but it is the powerfulness of that lived experience, of that real, honest story and of that bravery in sharing that story that means so much to us in this place. For that we are grateful, and we are very grateful to have you as part of our caucus, because you are a good man. We do love him.

There are a lot of people in our lives that we love, and I want to talk about a young person in my community who I know who is finding their place in the world. This is a young person who, because of the community in which I live and the community which we have helped construct in this state over some time—and it is not just this particular government that has created an environment of open-mindedness and inclusion in Victoria—is able to grow up in a community that is supportive of their journey in unravelling their identity. Their school is supportive, the friends around this person are supportive and their parents are supportive. This person has got enough on their plate in working through their place in the world and who they are in the world without somebody else eyeballing them and saying, ‘You’re not quite right; we need to change you. Don’t go down that path that you need to go down. Let me detour you’. To a degree—and it may not be intended—the real message is: ‘I am judging you and finding that you are failing, and I need to help you be someone better’.

To be your true self is the best that you can be—there is nothing better, and there is no way to make that better, because your true self is you. In the words of previous speakers, if you are somebody who believes in God, then you are created in God’s image and therefore you are the perfect self that you are supposed to be. There is no religion that really has the right or really has the freedom to tell you that you are wrong, and I am very glad that this government is stepping up and saying, ‘No, that is wrong’. That hurt that is created by putting somebody in a room, by praying over them, by counselling them, by exorcising them and by telling them that their true self is not the person that they can be, that they have to in fact manufacture themselves to be accepted, that they have to pretend to be somebody else in order to be, in the view of another person, perfect, is wrong. It does need to stop, and we do need to have laws in place that protect very vulnerable people like this young person in my community, who is going to have a positive journey towards realising their true self and who is going to be supported in that journey of realising their true self.

I had an email—I am sure we have all had plenty of emails, but one of them I found interesting—and this person wrote to me saying, ‘But you are a Catholic. You were baptised a Catholic. You must vote against this bill’. In my view being a Catholic is being taught how to be compassionate, how to be kind and how to be inclusive. Being a Catholic is not about judging another person, and it is certainly not about telling somebody else that they are not the person that they should be and that they are wrong because they are true to the gender that they recognise they are or the sexuality that they have.

Religion has so many beautiful components to it. There are so many beautiful things that come from religion and from celebrating the goodness within ourselves. I do recognise that there are people who approach this issue with good intentions. There are people who are not coming from an aspect of judgement but coming from an aspect of compassion in wanting to help somebody else find the true path to God. I understand that. This bill does not stop somebody from saying, ‘These are the teachings of our particular region’. It is not saying, ‘If you want to adhere to the views of this religion, this is the way we teach it, this is way we describe it and this is the way we construct this religion and the values that we have’. This bill does not stop you from doing that. What this bill stops you from doing is trying to deliberately change that other person and causing harm and hurt. This is the fundamental crux of this bill. It is about preventing harm and hurt—because that is what these practices do.

I recognise the sensitivity of the government and of the Attorney-General in changing the language and in recognising that ‘conversion’ is a word that has many meanings within religion. The fact is that the body of the text within this bill reflects that and reflects the true purpose of the Attorney-General, which is not to limit the freedom of religion but to prevent the harm from others in trying to force another individual to subscribe to a world view that is not inherently true to them and their true self. These people are not broken. They are not broken at all.

I also received an email from a local resident who had received harm in having had people try to convert them from being their true self, try to stop them from being a gay man and try to encourage them to live another way, in a way that was not true to their natural and true self. That person is, years later, still hurt by that experience, still wounded by that experience and desperate for this legislation to go through so that they know that another person does not have to be subjected to this kind of treatment, to this kind of discrimination, because that is exactly what that practice is. It is discrimination. It is stopping somebody from being who they are.

One of my early experiences as an elected member of this place was to have a conversation with a few other MPs with a religious figure. One of the astonishing things that this religious figure told us was that in the teachings within their world men and women have different roles in society, and the reason that men and women have different roles in their society, or one at least, was the fact that women’s brains are smaller. Now, I will paraphrase the member for Kew here. I do not often agree with the member for Kew on many things, but I certainly agree with some of the things that he has said this week in his references to, ‘You are what you are. I prayed 20 years ago to be 6 foot 4 and instead I’m 5 foot 10’.

Mr Wynne: He’s not 5 foot 10. I’ll give you the drum. If he is 5 foot 10, I’m Andrew Bogut.

Ms WARD: Well, you are quite tall.

So women were better suited not necessarily to have a role in this place but to be homemakers because our brains are smaller. So I suggest I could probably pray all I like to make my brain bigger—so that I could be acceptable to this person, this religious figure—and actually have the roles in life that I would like to have, but my brain is not going to be bigger. It is not going to be bigger at all. It is not going to change, no matter how hard I pray. No matter how much God might think it would be great for me to have a bigger brain, it is not going to happen. It is the same when it comes to your sexuality and your gender identity. No matter how hard you pray, it is not going to change. It may force you to create a false persona, it may force you to live a life that you are imagining or to live a life that is not the life that really belongs to you—and that may work for you, but really is not your true self, because you cannot change who you inherently are.

We know through the people that have spoken here. They have been very clear, and I include the member for Oakleigh in this. He is who he is, and we love him for it. We do not want him to change, we do not want anyone else to think that he can change—because he is a beautiful, compassionate man who has a beautiful partner. We look forward to the day when they will be married—and thankfully in this country they now can get married because we have also removed that discrimination nationally. This is another discrimination that we need to remove. In removing this discrimination we are not preventing religious freedom, we are not preventing freedom of assembly; we are preventing hurt. You do not have the right as a religious person—

Mr Wynne: That’s right—do no harm.

Ms WARD: Exactly, member for Richmond, as a religious person your role is to do no harm. It is not to tell people that who they are is wrong, that their sexuality is wrong, that their gender is wrong and that with a person’s help they can change. That is not your role. Your role is to be accepting and to be loving and to be kind, and—again I will quote the member for Richmond—to do no harm. That is at the heart of this bill, which I support wholeheartedly.

Ms COUZENS (Geelong) (16:31): I am really pleased to rise to speak on this bill. This is an important and significant bill for the people of Victoria but in particular for my community of Geelong as well. I want to pass my thanks on to the Attorney-General for all the work that she has done in bringing this to this place today.

I speak to many people in my community, particularly within the LGBTQI community at the Pride rallies and the different events that occur in my community, and I listen to their stories and I understand just how important and significant this bill is that we are addressing today. There have been many contributions on this bill from this side of the house that I want to acknowledge—such passion and commitment to our community overall has been reflected in this debate today. I particularly want to acknowledge the member for Oakleigh and his contribution. The strength that the member for Oakleigh shows in standing up for the community, not just for the LGBTQI community but the community overall, is really significant and I want to acknowledge that.

This bill really is about preventing harm in our community. Who has the right to harm anyone in our community? We have a responsibility as a government to protect everyone in our community. I have received many emails, like many others in this place, on this particular issue, and I am pleased to say that I have received many emails from within my electorate from people who support this bill. Obviously there is opposition to it from within religious organisations; I get that, but I also do not agree or understand how they would be prepared to inflict harm on people—although if we look at what has happened in terms of child sexual abuse and those sorts of things, well, maybe I will not go into that.

I think for my community this is a very welcome bill. This legislation means a lot to those people in my community. As I said, I do talk to a lot of LGBTQI people in my community and I listen to what they say to me, and clearly they want to see this legislation pass. I want to read an email from a constituent in my electorate that I received the other day. I will not use her name because I have not asked her permission, but this email is in support of the bill and explains why:

… I am a bisexual woman who has grown up in the church.

I am writing to show my support for the proposed Bill to ban LGBTQ+ conversion practices.

I have grown up hearing the rhetoric that queer people are disgusting, broken, unholy. This has been extremely distressing for me to experience. If my experience has been awful, think how much worse it has been for LGBTQ+ people who experience conversion practices.

Everyone deserves to live with dignity and respect. LGBTQ+ are whole, valid and loved just the way they are. No practice that attempts to change or suppress a person’s gender identity or sexual orientation is acceptable.

With this Bill we can ensure that LGBTQ+ people feel safe and supported in Victoria.

While no law can fix the complex social problem on its own, this Bill is a great step towards healing for many survivors and to preventing the harm that these damaging and unscientific practices cause to our young people.

Thank you for your time.

That is from Monica in Geelong. That is just one of many emails that I have received as the member for Geelong, and I am really pleased to represent my community overall. As I said, I cannot comprehend anyone that would want to cause harm to anyone, and I am particularly proud of this government for this sort of social reform that really reflects our values as a Labor government. It is really important not only to us but to our community, to my constituents, that we are doing this work and we are doing it in such a way that is preventing these sorts of harmful practices.

In 2018 the health complaints commissioner was asked to lead an inquiry into change or suppression, also known as ‘conversion’, practices in Victoria. The commissioner found that not only were these practices occurring here in Victoria but they were also happening outside the medical field. The commissioner recommended that the government legislate to prohibit these practices in all their forms. Then in 2019 at that year’s Pride March the Premier announced that he would denounce and prohibit conversion practices in Victoria, known also in the past as so-called ‘conversion therapy’, which I will now refer to as change or suppression practices. I can tell you the LGBTQ community in my electorate were over the moon with the Premier’s announcement that day. They welcomed it very much and were singing and dancing that night and having a great time but were—

Mr Wynne: You’d be into that.

Ms COUZENS: Yes, I was into that, Minister. I joined them in that celebration, because I certainly supported that announcement.

It is important to address why this change of language has happened. Throughout the government’s consultation on the development of the bill we heard that the term ‘therapy’ was seen as too legitimising of these practices when in fact they have no basis in medicine whatsoever. Similarly, we heard from faith groups who were concerned that the term ‘conversion’ diminished a concept that holds great importance to some people of faith. ‘Change or suppression practices’ avoids both of these concerns and tackles what this issue is really about: attempts to make people alter or hide a fundamental part of who they actually are.

This bill recognises that these practices are based on a flawed ideology that people’s sexuality or gender identity can be fixed, and we know they cannot. There is no evidence that any person can have their sexuality or gender identity forcibly altered. Attempts to do so only cause harm, as we know, and sometimes lifelong harm or injury that survivors then must carry for the rest of their lives. These are the issues that I have heard consistently in my electorate from constituents who have had these experiences and have expressed their concern about what has gone on but also their support for this bill.

But here is the most fundamentally important part of the bill and this debate: nobody is broken. Because of their sexuality or their gender identity nobody needs to be fixed. Nobody should ever be made to feel like they need to change such a fundamental part of who they are. LGBTQ Victorians deserve to live in a state which affirms their lives and ensures that they can live life authentically as their true selves. We have heard the stories of what happens when this is not the case, when people are fed an ideology which makes them believe they are broken, and it needs to stop.

Survivors have welcomed this bill. They have called it ‘the most comprehensive response to conversion practices in the world’, ‘vastly better than any bill developed in Australia to date’ and ‘deeply grounded in research’. They have said:

The Victorian Government has put forward a Bill that could genuinely make a big difference to the lives of … Victorians who are vulnerable to conversion practices and ideology.

We have listened to survivors. I want to acknowledge their experiences, their voices, their advocacy and their hard work over so many years, and of course I want to include Geelong in that as well.

And I want to make reference to Thorne Harbour Health, who also sent an email to me and, I am sure, to other members and who regularly come to Geelong to provide support to their community. What they said is:

By passing this legislation, Victoria has a chance to lead the way globally in protecting the human rights of our sexually and gender diverse communities from incredibly harmful practices based on false and misleading claims.

This bill is informed by the lived experience of survivors of sexual orientation and gender identity change efforts and seeks to end these practices, which are harmful and grounded in unscientific claims. I commend the bill to the house.

Ms THOMAS (Macedon) (16:41): I am very proud to rise this afternoon on the very last sitting day of Parliament for 2020 to talk on this very important bill, the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020, a bill which had its genesis in the policy work of so many on this side of the house. It was an election commitment of the Andrews Labor government, one that the Premier was able to make with the Minister for Equality at the Midsumma Pride March back in 2017, I believe—a very important election commitment and an important piece of legislation that has required, as one would expect, a great deal of work, including stakeholder consultation, to bring it to the house in the form that we now have. As the member for Geelong has just noted, we are delivering a bill that is being widely lauded as the best of its class, if you like, across Australia. So I am very proud to do that.

As members in this place know, as the member for Macedon I am very proud to represent a very active and celebratory LGBTI community. Daylesford of course is well known to many not just for its natural beauty but as the host of the ChillOut Festival, Australia’s largest regional celebration of LGBTIQ pride. I am delighted to be able to stand here and let you all know that as of 2021 ChillOut will move from being a three-day celebration over the Labour Day weekend to being a week-long celebration. This is going to be incredible. It will bring even more visitors to our community and, I have no doubt, more tree changers to our community, all of which I embrace and our community embraces.

In speaking on such bills, particularly on our equality agenda and the way in which we have worked so hard to ensure the dignity of LGBTIQ members in our community, I always take the opportunity to reflect on how things have changed for the better over the years that I have had the good fortune to be on this earth. I think about my life experiences as a young person growing up in regional Victoria and contrast those with those of young people today. I think particularly about those students—you know, friends, classmates—at Tallangatta High and Wodonga High who were seen as a little bit different, a little bit odd, a little bit unusual and how their lives were essentially hell, actually. There was no-one there to provide support for kids who were struggling with their sexuality or gender identity. It was simply pushed under the carpet, or worse still these young people were made to feel that they were broken, damaged and in some way in need of fixing. Of course this is where the change and suppression acts that we have heard so much about come into play. Whilst I do not have firsthand knowledge of it, I have no doubt that many of the young people that I grew up with were potentially victims of some of these practices.

Thank goodness life has changed a lot, and I am so proud of the fact that Kyneton High, Daylesford Secondary and Gisborne Secondary all have active pride groups. As a community we come together to Wear it Purple and to raise the rainbow flag. The Bendigo electorate voted 68.7 per cent in favour of marriage equality back in 2017. The point I wanted to make is that life has really changed for the better for LGBTIQ Victorians in regional Victoria. We have come a long way, but we have still got a way to go, and this bill is about delivering on some of the changes that are still required to ensure that lesbians, gays, bisexual Victorians, transgender Victorians, intersex Victorians and queer and questioning Victorians can live a life that is purposeful, happy and full of dignity and confidence.

I wanted to also take the opportunity, being one of the last speakers on the bill, to congratulate my colleagues on their contributions today. I have been able to listen to a number of them but not all of the contributions. Of course the member for Burwood told his own very deeply personal story, and it was so affecting to listen to. I congratulate him for that, and I note the minister at the table, the member for Richmond, also took the opportunity to acknowledge the member for Burwood in his speech. Indeed the member for Buninyong got me thinking, because she was talking about her friends growing up as a teenager in regional Victoria.

I want to put on the record for the benefit of people in my community in particular that, look, I understand that campaigns can develop around things. Misinformation, as we have seen during the COVID pandemic, can spread like wildfire. So for the benefit of people in my community who have written to me opposing the bill I want to take the opportunity to put some of the facts of the bill on the record. We need to look at what the definition of ‘change or suppression practices’ is. The ban is based on a definition that has three elements. First, the conduct must be directed at an individual. So that ensures that conduct that is generally directed, such as sermons expressing a general statement of belief, are not captured. Second, the conduct must be directed on the basis of the victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Third, the person engaging in an attempt must intend to change or suppress or induce that person to change or suppress their sexual orientation or gender identity.

As we have already noted in the debate, this is a bill about equality for all Victorians. The notion that you would seek to change or suppress someone on the basis of their gender identity or sexuality is the opposite of equality because it actually suggests that this person is somehow less equal; that they are, as we have said, broken and in need of fixing; that they are not whole; and indeed that they should change. I am glad to see that this house this afternoon has said that we do not agree with that, and I extend that to those on the other side. People got up here and said, ‘This house, the Victorian Parliament, believes in equality for all Victorians’. So that is a very important moment, and I just want to acknowledge that it is all sides of the house who have said that today.

So I have talked about suppression practices. Any scenario must meet all three parts of that definition—not one or two but all three—so things like giving a sermon, teaching a religious studies class or even a faith leader counselling a person on what their faith teaches about sexuality would not be a change or suppression practice. The bill ensures that a balance is met between protecting religious freedom while also protecting people from harm and injury. The definition does not allow an adult to consent to change or suppression practices for a number of reasons. Firstly and most importantly, there is no medical evidence of change or suppression practices working. They are based on the idea that a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity is wrong—that is, that an innate part of a person is fundamentally wrong. As I have said, this house has today rejected that notion. Survivors have told us that messages about the brokenness of their identity is ingrained from a young age, so this makes any notion of consent to these practices difficult to determine.

In the few seconds that I have left I do want to say again to the people that have written to me opposing this bill: you do not have anything to be afraid of. Let us celebrate Victorians in all their diversity. And in faith groups let us work to celebrate our individuality, our differences, and celebrate the faith that people hold, not try to attack them as a person or change them as a person. Just wrap around the people that share your faith and support and celebrate them. That would seem to me to be an appropriate and indeed Christian response, and I say that on the basis that that is the majority faith practised in my electorate. I commend this bill to the house.

Ms EDWARDS (Bendigo West) (16:51): I want to make a contribution on this very important piece of legislation before the house today, the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020. I am very pleased to be able to do that even though it is the last speech on the last day of our sitting year. I had a lot of notes that I wrote in relation to this bill and I have sat and listened in the chair and in my office to many of the contributions today, and I just do not think I could do them justice, because they were so emotional, so progressive, so heartwarming. I want to pay tribute to everyone actually who has contributed today both on this side of the house and on the other side of the house. I asked myself after listening to many of the contributions today: why do some feel there is a need, a desire, to change someone else? Why does being LGBTIQ compel some to want to change them? I do not follow any religion. My faith comes from my ethics, my morals and my own personal views around social justice and treating others with respect and that everyone should have the opportunity to lead their best lives. I have heard today about the conflation of the objectives of this bill with the supposed restriction on religious freedoms, which seems to me to be a distraction from the purpose and desired outcomes of this bill.

Like many members, I have received many emails from those who object to the bill based basically on those religious freedoms and from many of course who have supported the bill, and I have a wonderful, wonderful LGBTIQ community in Bendigo—in fact right across my electorate. There was a lot of misinformation in those emails, a lot of information I am not sure where it actually came from. It was so outside of what this bill does that I fail to understand how that information could have actually been given to those people because it was so wrong. What it did say to me, though, is there is still a lot of prejudice out there in our community. I read many of those emails. I saw a lot of prejudice and an attempt at changing the narrative around why this bill is so important. I listened to the member for Oakleigh talk about his experiences and the discrimination that he has felt throughout his life, when he came out and how now that has changed so much for him because of the acceptance of the LGBTIQ community in this community.

There is no need to delay this important legislation. Further consultation will not alter the fact that banning these harmful practices must occur. In fact all it will do is cause further harm to those who are relying and depending on us as legislators to pass this necessary measure. If those who put forward amendments claim they support the banning of change and suppression practices, then I compel them to reconsider why there is a need to delay. I have heard many of them speak today on supporting the banning of change and suppression practices.

Some time ago the Premier said that here in Victoria equality is not negotiable, and that is something that all members on this side live and breathe every day. For our LGBTIQ communities across the state we are tasked with and committed to ensuring your equality before the law and across our society. This bill is another step to having a Victoria that denounces discrimination in all its forms. There are too many lived experiences and stories of LGBTI discrimination. I say: let us always work towards ending that. Let this bill pass this Parliament without delay. Let us put an end now and for always to this harmful, shameful and disgraceful practice of change conversion and let people be who they want to be and live their best lives.

I am going to talk now about a family member of mine. I will not mention their name, but they are a close family member who over the last couple of years has changed their gender. When this first happened there was some concern because there was a sense of shock, I suppose, and for none more so than this person’s mother. But I think the mother of this person was more concerned about what the family would think than about the fact that the child was changing their gender. Fortunately there was enormous support—enormous support—within the family, and even one of my aunties, who is a devout Catholic, said, ‘So what? That’s okay. Let them be who they want to be’. I was so proud of my family and the members of my extended family for embracing that person and their need, their desire, their want to change and be who they want to be without any discrimination, without any sense of having to be sent off to have some kind of psychotherapy to change who they really wanted to be. That person is now living their best life.

I say to the LGBTI communities across Victoria: we support you, we respect you and we want you to know that this legislation is just another measure along the path to ensuring your equality within our broader community. There is nothing more important than making sure that those who find themselves on the edges of society are brought into our mainstream, embraced and treated with the respect that they deserve.

It has been a pleasure to speak on this bill, but in the 1 minute that I have left remaining I want to diverge a little bit from the bill. I want to pay my thanks to you, Speaker, for your great work this year in our chair. You have been an outstanding Speaker. I also want to say thank you to the wonderful clerks, to Bridget and her team, to the maintenance staff and of course to our Hansard team and everyone who makes this Parliament—

A member: Catering.

Ms EDWARDS: Catering, of course! How could I forget Tim and the team and the wonderful coffees they make us every single day multiple times? I think that it is incumbent on all of us to show our appreciation to everyone who makes this Parliament work. This has been an extremely challenging year for the staff here, but they have made it work and I think we owe them a huge debt of gratitude. We look forward to coming back in February to no screens and no masks.

The SPEAKER: The time set down for consideration of items on the government business program has arrived, and I am required to interrupt business. The house is considering the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020. The minister has moved that the bill be read a second time. The member for Caulfield has moved a reasoned amendment to this motion. He has proposed to omit all the words after ‘That’ and replace them with the words that have been circulated. The question is:

That the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the motion.

Therefore those supporting the reasoned amendment moved by the member for Caulfield should vote no.

Question agreed to.

The SPEAKER: The question is:

That the bill be now read a second time, government amendment 1 be agreed to and the bill be now read a third time.

House proceeded to divide on question.

The SPEAKER: As there are 55 votes for the aye and no votes for the no, the division cannot proceed. I ask the member for South Barwon if he wishes his dissent recorded.

Mr CHEESEMAN: I am wishing my vote to be recorded as in favour of the bill.

Question agreed to.

Read second time.

Circulated amendments

Circulated government amendment as follows agreed to:

1. Clause 59, line 15, omit “preferences” and insert “references”.

Third reading

Motion agreed to.

Read third time.

The SPEAKER: I advise the house the bill will now be sent to the Legislative Council and their agreement requested.

Mr Wells: On a point of order, Speaker, I seek clarification because the member for South Barwon clearly said ‘No’ and called for a division. So how is it that he has now voted yes? I am just wondering whether he has changed his mind in between. How has that vote been recorded?

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for South Barwon has complied with the standing orders in terms of his obligations in the voting procedures.

Mr Cheeseman: On the point of order, Speaker, it is quite appropriate that any MP can request to have their vote recorded and that is what I did. Under standing order 162 that is what I sought to do.

Business interrupted under resolution of house of 8 December.