George Duncan's death spurs South Australia as first Australian state to fully decriminalise homosexuality in 1975
South Australia Liberal member of parliament Murray Hill (top left) and Labor attorney general Peter Duncan (bottom left), in Don Dunstan's government, were prime movers during the early 1970s for homosexual law reform that gained impetus from the drowning of Adelaide University lecturer Dr George Duncan near the university bridge over Adelaide's River Torrens.
Main image from Watershed, the oratorio honouring Dr Duncan
South Australia was the first Australian state to fully decriminalise male homosexuality in 1975, under reformist state premier Don Dunstan and attorney general Peter Duncan.
As attorney-general in the South Austraian Labor government 1965-68, Dunstan had drafted a homosexual laws reform bill but wanted to wait until public opinion was more sympathetic. That came with drowning of homosexual Adelaide University lecturer Dr George Duncan in the city’s River Torrens on May 10, 1972.
Duncan's death raised public awareness of widespread harassment of homosexuals and resulted in a push for law reform by some parliamentarians and by the gay rights organisation known as the Campaign Against Moral Persecution (CAMP).
South Australia’s first attempt at homosexual law reform, in response to Duncan's death, was led by Murray Hill, a Liberal Country League member of the South Australian Legislative Council. Hill, with implicit sypport from the Labor party, introduced a provite member's bill in July 1972 to amend the Criminal Law Consolidation Act that criminalised homosexuality – the first serious attempt to decriminalise homosexuality in Australia. While Hill's amendment was assented to on November 9, 1972, a further amendment weakened it to only allow a legal defence for homosexual acts committed in private.
Under the Criminal Law Consolidation Act Amendment Act 1972, homosexual conduct remained illegal but the act allowed for a defence in cases where the conduct had occurred in private among men over the age of 21. In 1973, the federal parliament had passed a motion supporting homosexual decriminalisation but, as the power to legislate on the issue was with the states, this had no real legislative impact.
South Australia Labor attorney general, wih premier Don Dunstan, went beyond his unsuccessful attempt to strengthen Hill's bill in 1973, when he introduced to parliament, on August 27, 1975, an unaltered bill that was defeated twice and then reintroduced a third time before passing, making South Australia the first Australian state to fully decriminalise homosexuality.
Dunstan and Duncan’s 1975 decriminalisation through the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Amendment Act 1975, abolished offences of buggery, gross indecency and soliciting. It also created an equal age of consent for homo- and hetero- sexual acts.
The Australian Capital Territory followed South Australia in 1976, having prepared its decriminalisation bill before Dunstan but, without self government at that time, had to rely on the federal parliament to enact laws which were not passed until after South Australia.
Other states (and territories) gradually reformed their laws, though initially not always in a way that gave equal rights to homosexuals: Victoria in 1980, the Northern Territory in 1983, New South Wales in 1984, Western Australia in 1989, Queensland in 1990 and Tasmania in 1997.
