2024 LGBTQ rights global update: Progress and reversals in Oceania and Australia
Fourth in a series of updates about LGBTQ rights internationally, region by region
LGBTQ rights journalist Rob Salerno, an editor for Erasing 76 Crimes, surveys the status of LGBTQ rights and marriage equality in this series, which started with overviews of the Caribbean, Central America and South America.; Africa; and Asia. (Click here to subscribe to his LGBTQ Global newsletter.)
New Zealand: Anti-LGBT zealots were fined after they repeatedly vandalized rainbow crosswalks and protested drag story hours in communities across the country.
Vanuatu: Parliament amended its Marriage Act to explicitly ban same-sex marriage. The government says its working on legislation to ban expression or advocacy for LGBT people.
[See also:
-
- Anti-gay moves in South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu. Rejection of same-sex marriage follows a proposal to ban LGBTQ rights advocacy (Nov. 19, 2024, Erasing 76 Crimes)
- Homophobic South Pacific nation of Tonga gets a gay chief justice. But Tonga’s king rejects U.N. women’s rights treaty for fear of same-sex marriage. (Sept. 5, 2024. Erasing 76 Crimes)
- French LGBTQ rights marchers call for immediate liberation of last colonies (June 24, 2024, Erasing 76 Crimes) ]
Australia: The biggest national news came from the federal Labor government announcing that it was abandoning its pledge to close a loophole in discrimination law allowing religious schools to discriminate against LGBT teachers and students, as it claimed it could not find consensus on the issue – an impossible bar.
The federal government introduced a hate crime bill that includes explicit protections for LGBT people; it hasn’t yet been brought to a vote. Tasmania announced it was also drafting LGBT-inclusive hate crime legislation, while Victoria announced it would extend its hate speech laws to include LGBT people in 2025. Queensland passed a bill updating its hate speech laws to better include trans and intersex people
The Australian Bureau of Statistics announced it would count LGBT people in the next census, after some drama when they initially said they wouldn’t.
New South Wales and South Australia both banned conversion therapy. Long-promised bans in Tasmania and Western Australia did not advance, but if they pass in 2025, that would only leave the Northern Territory uncovered.
New South Wales, Queensland, and the Capital Territory all abolished medical requirements for legal gender change. Western Australia abolished the surgical requirement but still requires a note from a medical provider. All of these now allow a nonbinary gender option.
New South Wales also passed a major “Equality Amendment Act,” which bundled together a number of LGBT rights issues under one bill. The final package was watered down from the original draft, but it still ended the surgical requirement to legally change gender (the last jurisdiction to do so); included protections for trans people in hate crime laws; depathologized trans people; updated family law to facilitate surrogacy; banned unnecessary surgeries on intersex children; repealed the offense of living off the avails of a sex worker; and created a domestic violence offense of outing an LGBTQ partner. Dropped from the law was a proposal to close the religious schools discrimination loophole
Earlier in the year, NSW also issued an apology for past anti-LGBT laws and practices and created a scheme to allow old convictions to expire.
There was an attempt to ban LGBT books from libraries in Cumberland, but the council rescinded the order amid public protest and threat from the state government.
Western Australia’s government said it would support repealing its ban on surrogacy (the only state ban in Australia) but has not brought forward legislation to do so. The government had also previously committed to expanding antidiscrimination law to cover trans and intersex people and to end the religious schools exemption, but didn’t do so. They say legislation will only come after state elections in March.
A ban on unnecessary surgeries on intersex babies came into effect in the ACT this year.
Queensland repealed a loophole allowing fertility clinics to discriminate against LGBT people.
