The Campaign

In 1988, more than one hundred arrests were made at Salamanca Market when the Tasmanian Gay Law Reform Group defied a ban on a stall featuring petitions to decriminalise sexual activity between consenting adult males in private. The arrests lit the spark for a campaign to change a law in Tasmania that was the most draconian in the Western world in terms of its penalty and, by the time of its repeal, the last of its kind in Australia. Based on personal testimony, parliamentary transcripts, media reports and archival sources, The Campaign chronicles Tasmania's journey from exclusion to inclusion, from opposition to acceptance, and from hatred to embrace.