FACT-CHECK: Does the Tasmanian conversion bill really criminalise prayer?

Tasmania’s House of Assembly is due to debate the Greens’ Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill 2026 in late October. Two claims have come to frame the argument. Deputy Premier and Attorney-General Guy Barnett says the bill risks criminalising religious conversations and prayers. Equality Tasmania’s Rodney Croome says the same provisions have run in Victoria and New South Wales without anyone being convicted for a conversation or a prayer. The two claims point in opposite directions in terms of what the bill would do in practice. Here's what the bill says, and how the claims hold up.

What the bill actually does

The bill, tabled by Greens leader Rosalie Woodruff on 10 September, bans conversion practices: conduct directed at a person, intended to change, suppress or eradicate their sexual orientation or gender identity. It creates a Conversion Practices Commissioner to receive reports and run education, and it creates criminal offences for the serious end of the conduct. It is modelled on the conversion laws already operating in other states — most closely Victoria’s — and on the 2022 Tasmanian Law Reform Institute (TLRI) report, which found conversion practices were still happening in Tasmania and recommended reform to prohibit them.

Two features matter for the claims that follow. First, section 5 lists conduct that is not a conversion practice:

• expressing a religious belief, including in prayer;
• stating what a religion teaches;
• parents discussing sexuality, gender or religion with their children;
• taking part in public debate;
• and health care that meets professional standards.

Most of these are protected because they “do not, of itself, constitute a conversion practice”; the health-care exclusion has its own test, that the care is provided in good faith and meets professional requirements.

Second, the criminal offence is not made out by the practice alone. The prosecution must show the practice caused injury, and that the person was negligent as to whether it would. Serious cases go to the Supreme Court.

Claim 1: The bill criminalises religious conversations and prayers (Barnett)

Verdict: overstated.

There's a real point buried inside Barnett's claim, but the headline version is not quite right.

In correspondence to the group Women Speak Tasmania, first reported by the ABC, Barnett called the bill “fundamentally flawed” and said it “risks criminalising conversations and or prayers in a church or religious setting”, describing it as among the most extreme of its type in Australia.

The bill does close to the opposite of criminalising prayer and religious conversation in general. It names them, in section 5, as conduct that is not a conversion practice. Ordinary preaching, teaching what a religion holds, and a parent talking to their child about sexuality or faith all sit expressly outside the ban. And because the criminal offence requires proven injury plus fault, nobody faces conviction for a prayer in the abstract.

What the bill can actually affect is narrower: a prayer or a conversation aimed at an individual as part of a sustained effort to change or suppress who they are. That is the Victorian and NSW position too, and it's the kernel of truth in Barnett’s claim. A prayer-based practice directed at a person is not automatically safe.

Critics such as Freedom for Faith argue that protecting conduct only where it “does not, of itself, constitute a conversion practice” is close to circular: the exemption holds right up until the conduct is classed as the very thing being banned. That's a fair point to debate but it's a long way from the bill criminalising religious conversations and prayers.

Barnett is the state’s chief law officer, which gives his reading weight, but it's a contested legal reading, not a neutral one, and it's firmer than his own Premier’s. Jeremy Rockliff supports banning conversion practices in principle and has said only that this bill has “overreach” and “rough edges”. The government released its own, narrower draft bill in 2023, when Barnett was attorney-general, though it was never tabled. So the disagreement is about which model should be used, not whether to act.

Claim 2: No one in Victoria or NSW has been convicted for a conversation or a prayer (Croome)

Verdict: accurate.

The Victorian Act has been in force since February 2022. In its 2026 review of that Act, the Victorian Law Reform Commission stated plainly that there had been no criminal prosecutions under it, and that it was aware of no prosecutions under any comparable Australian law. The NSW Act only commenced on 4 April 2025. On the evidence available, no one in either state has been convicted for a conversation or a prayer, because no one has been criminally prosecuted under these laws at all.

The absence of convictions isn’t, by itself, proof that prayer or conversation can never be caught. It partly reflects how the schemes work: they are young, they route most reports through conciliation and education rather than the courts, and the criminal threshold is set high. What the record does rebut is the specific fear Barnett raises, that people will be hauled before a court for a prayer. Four and a half years into the Victorian law, that hasn’t happened once.

The numbers behind the bill

Dr Miranda Hann, organising a statement signed by more than 50 Tasmanian health practitioners, cited the figures that recur through this debate: one in 20 LGBTQIA+ Tasmanians have been through formal conversion practices, and survivors are three to four times more likely to have PTSD and to attempt suicide.

Those figures are real, but they come from two different studies. The prevalence figure (about one in 20) is from the University of Tasmania’s “Telling Us the Story” survey of LGBTIQ+ Tasmanians (2021), where 5% of 825 respondents, across all age groups, reported experiencing conversion practices. The “three to four times more likely” figures for PTSD and attempted suicide come from La Trobe University’s national Writing Themselves In 4 (2021), a survey of LGBTQA+ young people aged 14 to 21 that found a similar prevalence in its Tasmanian cohort. Both are real and are routinely cited together, but they measure different populations — one Tasmanian and all ages, one national and young — so it's worth getting that straight but the scale of the harm isn’t in doubt.

Croome’s related claim, that every reputable health organisation which submitted to the TLRI inquiry agreed conversion practices should be prohibited, fits the record. The TLRI recommended reform to prohibit conversion practices, and the organised opposition came from lobby groups such as the Australian Christian Lobby rather than from health bodies. We’d want to source the “every single” formulation to the submissions list before leaning on it, though.

The bottom line

The strongest case against the bill isn’t that it bans prayer. It doesn’t. The strongest case is a drafting argument about how tightly the religious carve-out is written, and one could argue that's worth consideration.

Against it sits the interstate record: Victoria, NSW, Queensland, South Australia and the ACT have already legislated against conversion practices — Queensland’s law more narrowly, confined to health settings — and years of operation have produced none of the courtroom scenes opponents predicted. Tasmania would be following a tested model, not trying something new.