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Will the Tasmanian (gay) devils survive? |
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 Self-determination for the Tasmanian GLBTI community is facing a new era, writes Julian Punch.
Now that the Tasmanian GLBTI Mardi Gras contingent have returned from their popular participation in the celebration, marching in defence of our threatened iconic species the Tassie devil, it is good to reflect on our community’s well-being in Tasmania.
Following the dedicated work of activists and the resulting law reform and development of anti-discrimination and partnership legislation there is a sense that the Tasmanian community has matured; an expressed, but yet unfulfilled desire to self-determine our participation in the broader state community.
People want to represent and conduct their own affairs at state, national and international levels from a franchised and representative local and regional base upwards. I am personally involved in a program designed to foster this desired enfranchisement and later in this article I will return to discuss in some detail its genesis and its goals. First, I will look at some of the challenges facing our state.
Tasmania has a most dispersed population, with a Hobart-centric base that is the seat of government decision-making. Hobart, unlike provincial Tasmania, has a professional class base with prominent representation from the sexual and gender diverse population, self-assured and protected by the legislative changes. This model is not replicated in regional and rural Tasmania, where an old, dominant homophobic culture reigns supreme and unopposed.
The large influx of ‘rainbow immigrants’ from the eastern Australian seaboard in the last 10 years, attracted by a ‘lifestyle sea change’ and lower property prices in rural and remote Tasmania, is effecting a sea change of considerable proportions and heat in the regions. Sexuality- and gender-diverse people in the old culture knew their place as hidden and silent; if this did not appeal, they could – as a majority did – leave.
In this culture, nothing much has changed from a convict past that leaves many of our community 'in the closet', fearful and feeling exposed to some awful consequences (many real, some imagined) of coming out. Many never recover their life potential, many are married, many die without realising their sexuality in a loving partnership. A concerning number suicide, many practice unsafe sex. It was and still is in some areas a local culture that cruelly and violently stamps out any expression of ‘perversion’ not only from a religious doctrinaire conviction, but also from an excessive, macho-hetero insecurity.
The new expectation of ‘pink economic immigrants’ to participate in the general community with respect for their diversity, and of being able to celebrate their culture as they did on the mainland, is challenging the formerly compliant decision-making in the GLBTI community, as well as the general community. The closet doors are now somewhat ‘hanging off their hinges and swinging in the breeze’.
The Coming Out Proud Program (COPP) is designed to help members of the LGBTI community achieve this process. The concept of establishing four regional GLBTI Community Liaison Committees endorsed by local government, and the appointment of Liaison Councillors, has taken three years of action after eighteen months of consultation.
Through the four regional Community Liaison Committees, COPP provides for strategies that will enable gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex people in their localities and regions to live in their community with dignity, as fully-respected and participating members.
The Cradle Coast Authority recently endorsed its Community Liaison Committee, engaging nine councils on the North West/West Coast. The authority was encouraged to do this by the homophobic furore that followed a business-planning proposition by the now well-known gay entrepreneur Stephen Roach at Penguin. Roach’s planning concept was met not only by the ‘fundamentalist sects’ discrimination and harassment but also by the pathetic action of nailing a dead wallaby to the doors of the very successful Penguin Markets set up by Roach and his partner.
How do less powerful GLBTI people survive, you may well ask?
The COPP proposal to establish a Tasmanian GLBTI Consultative Council to coordinate, consult, initiate support and generally be responsible for representing GLBTI people at a state and national level has slowly gained momentum. It is a goal compatible with the establishment of the inclusive GLBTI benchmarks in the government’s Tasmania Together initiative, as well as the Whole of Government Framework for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Communities released in October 2004.
The state government has accepted the COPP approach as a balanced model of franchise for the GLBTI community with representation from local and regional areas across a state that has the most dispersed population in Australia. The GLBTI Consultative Council – formed with representatives from a local and regional base as well as including special funded service organisations (TasCAHRD and Working It Out) – is in my opinion the best way for the GLBTI community to ‘think local and act global’.
What motivates the government most at this time is the economic reality of the financial contribution that the incoming ‘pink immigrants’ are making to our community. Each person fleeing the climate change heat and incessant pace of the ‘other island’ brings with them on average $400,000 - $700,000 in superannuation and savings alone – apart from their skill base and recurrent earning capacity.
But this seed of cash, this potential cultural harvest, can fall on rocky ground. Some immigrants return to the mainland or their homelands overseas having experienced considerable opposition, homophobia, and sometimes violence.
With the GLBTI community under renewed attack from most conservatives and rural neo-Nazi elements in the community, it is essential that support and protection for survival and our way of life and culture is organised as a collective reality with respect for those sections of our community less able to protect themselves.
It is also important to count the cost of change and support those who are paying it. This social and collective organisation is very weak at all levels at this time when it is most needed. Thus it is sad that older radicals and some service organisations under the guise of retaining diversity of function and individuality are opposing the idea of the Tasmanian GLBTI Consultative Council.
It is believed the Tassie devil will survive the current epidemic through a concerted push, now underway, coordinated by substantial local effort. It is my hope that the Tasmanian devils that went to Mardi Gras showed all their brothers and sisters on our island how to put aside differences to confront the challenges that lie ahead for all of us.
Julian Punch AM is State Coordinator of the Coming Out Proud Program.
You can make a difference by joining your local Community Liaison Committee. Check out the website for details, plus links to services and organisations across Tasmania: www.comingoutproud.org
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