Deputy Ozanne was called to give evidence in the Houses of Parliament this week to the joint committee examining the Draft Conversion Practices Bill.
The bill seeks to criminalise abusive practices aimed at changing someone’s sexual orientation or transgender identity.
‘This has been an incredibly long journey, with many setbacks and delays, but the good news is that we are now finally discussing an actual bill,’ she said.
Her evidence drew on her own experience of being subjected to conversion practices, particularly in religious settings, and on her work to end them.
She set up and chaired the Ban Conversion Therapy Coalition and has chaired the Ban Conversion Therapy Legal Forum.
In 2017 she developed a private member’s motion that was aimed at getting religious institutions to ban conversion practices.
Deputy Ozanne welcomed the fact that the bill covers transgender people and the provision of conversion therapy overseas, but said parts of it were getting things ‘badly wrong’.
She argued that its definition of a criminal conversion practice put the burden on victims by requiring them to prove that serious harm, alarm or distress had been caused.
She also said the threshold for harm was too high, and that intervention should come before that point was reached.
She cautioned against using the word ‘abuse’ in the definition, which she said implied there could be a non-abusive form of conversion practice.
She also criticised the bill for not addressing suppression, which she described as one of the most common forms of conversion practice in religious settings.
The bill does not mention consent either.
While accepting that people arguably cannot consent to abuse anyway, Deputy Ozanne said a comprehensive bill should be explicit on the point.
‘We must ensure that it actually does what it claims to and protects victims from all forms of these horrendous practices, including in religious settings,’ she said.
‘I encouraged the committee to learn from other jurisdictions and not to try to reinvent the wheel.
‘Unfortunately, at present they have only managed to create a square wheel.’
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