Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in Australian state of Tasmania have the same legal rights as non-LGBTQ people. Tasmania has a transformative history with respect to the rights of LGBTQ people. Initially dubbed "Bigots' Island" by international media due to intense social and political hostility to LGBTQ rights up until the late 1990s, the state has subsequently been recognised for LGBTQ law reforms that have been described by activists such as Rodney Croome as among the most extensive and noteworthy in the world. Tasmania's criminal penalties for homosexual activity were the harshest in the Western world when they were repealed in 1997. It was the last Australian jurisdiction to decriminalise homosexuality after a United Nations Human Rights Committee ruling, the passage of federal sexual privacy legislation and a High Court challenge to the state's anti-homosexuality laws. Following decriminalisation, social and political attitudes in the state rapidly shifted in favour of LGBTQ rights ahead of national trends with strong anti-LGBTQ discrimination laws passed in 1999, and the first state relationship registration scheme to include same-sex couples introduced in 2003. In 2019, Tasmania passed and implemented the world's most progressive gender-optional birth certificate laws. In July 2023, the Tasmanian government officially included and also added "asexual or asexuality".
Same-sex marriage has been legal in the state since December 2017, after passage of the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Act 2017 in the Australian Parliament. The 2017 Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey, designed to gauge public support for same-sex marriage in Australia, returned a 63.6% "Yes" response in Tasmania. As of September 2026, conversion therapy practices is still legally permitted within Tasmania. In November 2025, the Tasmanian government implemented an Australian first compensation victims fund for past homosexuality and cross dressing criminal record convictions within Tasmania - prior to 1997 and 2002 respectively possibly effecting hundreds of individuals. Effective since August 2, 2026 the up to $75,000 compensation payments for affected individuals were implemented by Tasmanian legislation.
Laws regarding sexual activity History Official persecution Sodomy was originally outlawed throughout the island from the time of British settlement. The law was retained post federation as in all other Australian jurisdictions. Tasmania was the last British Empire outpost to carry out the death penalty for sodomy in 1867. Over the subsequent hundred years, Tasmania had the highest rate of imprisonment for private consenting male sex anywhere in the world.
In the late 1980s, Premier Robin Gray stated that homosexuals were unwelcome in Tasmania and police recorded the vehicle registration plates of people attending gay community meetings. A gay rights stall set up in Salamanca Market in 1988 was repeatedly shut down by the Hobart City Council with over 120 people arrested by police. By the early 1990s, the state had the harshest penalty for gay sex in the Western world at 21 years imprisonment.
During the 1980s and early 1990s, six attempts at decriminalisation were emphatically rejected by the Tasmanian Legislative Council, with politician Robert Archer calling for homosexuals to be "tracked down and wiped out" by police. Social and political opinion remained sharply against gay rights until the late 1990s. Many gay and lesbian Tasmanians responded to the hostile sentiment by either relocating to the mainland Australian cities of Sydney or Melbourne, living in the closet or committing suicide. Recalling the personal impact of the 1990s decriminalisation debate, comedian Hannah Gadsby noted it led them to "rot quietly in self-hatred" and unable to develop an aptitude for relationships.
UNHRC complaint and federal response
The Tasmanian Parliament's repeated refusal to pass laws decriminalising private same-sex sexual acts resulted in local resident Nicholas Toonen bringing a human rights complaint to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, which ruled in Toonen's favour on 31 March 1994. The Committee noted that "the criminalisation of homosexual practices cannot be considered a reasonable means or proportionate measure to achieve the aim of preventing the spread of AIDS/HIV," further noting that "The Australian Government observes that statutes criminalising homosexual activity tend to impede public health programs by driving underground many of the people at the risk of infection." Gay activists and Amnesty International also mounted a campaign in favour of reform including demonstrations in the state and elsewhere, holding meetings between LGBTI Tasmanians and community groups across the state and gay men self-reporting their then-illegal consensual activities to police to illustrate that the laws were unenforceable, given that police would not prosecute them on the basis that it was not in the public interest.
Although the UNHRC decision of 31 March 1994 effectively called on the federal Keating government to overturn Tasmania's anti-homosexuality laws, Keating and his Attorney-General Michael Lavarch were initially slow to act, considering it a low-priority issue. The continued criminalisation led to a petition signed by 12,000 people and a "Buy Right" boycott campaign targeting Tasmanian tourism and produce until the laws were repealed.
Four months after the UNHRC decision and after failing to persuade the Tasmanian Government to repeal the offending laws, the Keating government passed the Human Rights (Sexual Conduct) Act 1994, with section 4 legalising sexual activity between consenting adults throughout Australia and prohibiting any laws that arbitrarily interfere with the sexual conduct of adults in private. Lavarch stated the Tasmanian law was "an obnoxious criminal provision which doesn't exist anywhere else in Australia and is inconsistent with Australia's human-rights obligations".
The Catholic Right members of the Australian Labor Party initially opposed the federal legislation but ultimately agreed to support its passage, while the issue split the opposition Coalition, with many members exercising their conscience vote against it and replacing their relatively progressive leader Alexander Downer with the more conservative John Howard. This law did not directly invalidate the Tasmanian law, as the Keating government preferred to avoid a challenge from conservative states about states rights and instead rely on the High Court to indirectly overturn the Tasmanian law. This approach was criticised by activists and academics for abdicating the political responsibility of legislators for an uncomfortable issue to the courts.
High Court case and decriminalisation
On 14 November 1995, Nick Toonen and his then-partner Rodney Croome applied to the High Court of Australia for a ruling that Tasmania's anti-gay laws were constitutionally overridden by the Human Rights (Sexual Conduct) Act 1994 and therefore invalid. The case was taken by Alan Goldberg QC, who provided his services pro bono after Croome and Toonen were denied legal aid to mount the case despite fulfilling the criteria for funding as a public interest test case.
In 1996, the state Liberal Government of Tony Rundle changed its position on gay law reform from opposition to allowing a conscience vote after failing in its attempts to have the High Court matter struck out and amid growing local support for reform. The Tasmanian Greens under Christine Milne then began to push vigorously for law reform.
As a result of these changes, on 1 May 1997 a bill formally repealing the state’s anti-homosexuality laws (the Criminal Code Amendment Act 1997) passed in the Tasmanian Legislative Council by one vote, after having passed in the Tasmanian House of Assembly on 26 March. Royal Assent was received on 13 May 1997 and the law came into effect the next day.
The age of consent in Tasmania is 17 years and is equal for all forms of sexual activity.
Historical conviction expungement scheme In December 2015, the Tasmanian Liberal Government announced it would introduce legislation in the Tasmanian Parliament to expunge historic criminal records for consensual homosexual sexual activity. This announcement followed a report released by the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Commissioner in April 2015 which recommended the establishment of such a scheme and how it should be modelled. Individuals charged with offences pertaining to homosexual sexual conduct prior to its decriminalisation in 1997 will be able to submit an application with the state's Secretary of the Department of Justice to have such charges removed from their criminal records. A draft bill was released by the Department of Justice in June 2016.
On 6 April 2017, the Expungement of Historical Offences Act 2017 was introduced to the Tasmanian House of Assembly by Attorney-General Vanessa Goodwin. The bill would allow those who were convicted of homosexual sexual offences (prior to its decriminalisation in Tasmania in 1997) and cross-dressing (which was an offence under the Police Offences Act 1935, until being repealed in 2001) to apply to the Secretary for the Department of Justice, or have a person apply on their behalf if deceased, to have their conviction expunged. The bill was debated in the Assembly on 13 April, and was passed in the Assembly on 2 May 2017. It then proceeded to the mostly independent Legislative Council for consideration, where a first reading was held on 19 May 2017. The bill was debated in the council on 20 and 21 September 2017, passing the council on the latter date. Several amendments designed to streamline procedures relating to applications, the treatment of sensitive data and the decision-making process were agreed to by the council. The Assembly agreed to the council's amendments on 18 October 2017, and the bill became an Act of Parliament by royal assent on 21 November 2017. The law went into effect on 9 April 2018. Schemes of this nature exist in all other jurisdictions of Australia.
As of November 2020, a proposal to establish a compensation scheme for individuals convicted of same-sex sexual activity or cross dressing prior to 1997 and 2001 respectively is being drafted. On August 2, 2026 the up to $75,000 for effected individuals compensation payment went into effect by Tasmanian legislation.
Parliamentary apology On 13 April 2017, the Tasmanian Government, represented by Premier Will Hodgman, issued an official parliamentary apology to members of the LGBT community in Tasmania who had been historically affected by laws which criminalised homosexuality in the state until 1997. Hodgman stated that "it is [the government's] view that the broader Tasmanian community would believe that people should never have been charged or convicted in the first place, even if it was thought at the time it was the right thing to do, it was not". Leader of the Opposition Rebecca White also issued an official apology, saying an apology was "long overdue" for the "terrible injustice done as a result of these laws". Cassy O'Connor, leader of the Greens, asked the LGBTI Tasmanian community "to forgive us for not holding you in our arms".
Recognition of same-sex relationships