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 from Wednesday 28 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. They point in opposite directions about what the bill would do in practice. Here is what it 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 closely on the Victorian and NSW laws and on the 2022 Tasmanian Law Reform Institute (TLRI) report, which found conversion practices were still happening in Tasmania and recommended a ban.

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.

Each exclusion carries the same condition: the conduct is protected “provided the conduct is not engaged in as part of a conversion practice”.

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 or reckless 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 it, 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 reach 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 is the kernel of truth in Barnett’s claim. A prayer-based practice directed at a person is not automatically safe.

The genuine argument his side can make is about the drafting of the carve-out, not its absence. Critics such as Freedom for Faith argue that protecting conduct “provided it is not part of a conversion practice” is close to circular: the exemption holds right up until the conduct becomes the very thing being banned. That is a fair point to debate. It is a long way from the bill criminalising religious conversations and prayers.

Two points of context sharpen this. Barnett is the state’s chief law officer, which gives his reading weight, but it is a contested legal reading, not a neutral one, and it is 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”. Barnett also brought forward his own, narrower conversion bill as a minister in 2023, so the disagreement is about which model, 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 2025 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. They come from La Trobe University’s Writing Themselves In 4 (2021), with the Tasmanian cohort matching the national result. One qualification: the study measured young LGBTIQA+ people, and the “one in 20” is drawn from a recent-years window. Advocates, and the Star Observer’s report (included in our 24 October 2026 Weekend Wrap), tend to drop the word “young”, which states the finding a little more broadly than the research supports. The scale of the harm isn’t in doubt but the wording is worth getting right.

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 a ban, 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.

The bottom line

The strongest case against the bill isn’t that it bans prayer. It doesn’t, and it says so. The strongest case is a drafting argument about how tightly the religious carve-out is written, and that's worth testing on its merits.

Against it sits the interstate record: Victoria, NSW, Queensland, South Australia and the ACT have already legislated along these lines, and years of operation have produced none of the courtroom scenes opponents predicted. Tasmania would be following a tested model, not trying something new.