Faith Leaders’ Response to NSW Conversion Practices Consultation Paper 2033

Excerpt:

1.The purpose of this document is to provide a collective response from the faith leaders listed
below to the Banning of Conversion Practice Consultation Paper released by the Departments
of Communities and Justice and Health (Departments) of the New South Wales Government
dated 31 July 2023 (Consultation Paper).

2. We consider the timeframe allotted for this consultation to be extremely brief. It is not
commensurate with the dramatic and unprecedented limitations that the reforms represent
for religious and associational freedom in New South Wales. If the pressured timeframe is
indicative of the intended pace of the reform, the reforms will fail to adequately address the
very serious concerns we express in this collective response.

3. It is indisputable that the proposals in the Consultation Paper produced by the Departments
severely depart from the commitments the Premier and other ALP candidates provided prior
to the election, including at a community forum at which many of the signatories to this
submission were present. This submission further details how we consider the proposals in
the Consultation Paper fail to reflect, and even breach, the government’s commitments.

4. The Consultation Paper proposes 25 questions. They touch upon immensely complex and
unchartered areas of the law. In the interest of clarity and in avoiding unnecessary repetition,
we first overview our concerns through an analysis of the Consultation Paper. We then answer
the questions posed by referring back to that analysis. It is fortunate that New South Wales
may take the benefit of the experience of other jurisdictions. In particular, the proposals in the
Consultation Paper disclose a close alignment with the Victorian Change or Suppression
(Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021, notwithstanding the Premier’s election
commitment to not ‘transpose the Victorian legislation and implement it into New South
Wales’. Indeed, the Consultation Paper itself acknowledges this when it states, ‘[p]rovisions
in Victoria … are most similar to this proposal.’ Given that candid admission, regard to the
evidence provided by the Victorian Government during the Parliamentary debate and the
subsequent clarifications of that law provided by the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human
Rights Commission enables us to illustrate the dramatic incursions upon religious and
associational freedoms regarding parental rights and clinical practice that is proposed in the
Consultation Paper. We submit that the current proposal, if accepted will cause actual harm to
vulnerable people.

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