SA Premier Jay Weatherill Will Apologise To The LGBTQI Community For Discriminatory State Laws

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill will issue a formal apology in state parliament to the LGBTQI community next week, for the “pain and distress” caused by years of discriminatory legislation. The Labor politician posted on Facebook this morning saying that “for far too long, discrimination against our LGBTIQ community has been written into our state’s laws.”

The apology will come on the back of a number of recent bills passing through the state’s lower house that Weatherill said “will right many of the wrongs of the past.” Among the bills, which still need to pass the upper house, is legislation that will finally allow same-sex couples in the state to adopt children. South Australia and the Northern Territory are the only jurisdictions in Australia where same-sex couples are currently unable to do so.

Another bill will see overseas same-sex marriages recognised in the state. In January, Weatherill said he was “deeply ashamed” after South Australia failed to acknowledge the marriage of a man who died while on honeymoon in Adelaide with his husband. He promised at the time to take steps to ensure that such a failure would never happen again.

Members of the public will be able to watch Weatherill’s apology in person, or view it via a live stream on the politician’s Facebook page.

The South Australian won’t be the only state premier to have issued such an apology this year. In May his Victorian counterpart Daniel Andrews apologised in state parliament for the law that made homosexuality illegal in Victoria until 1981, calling it “profoundly and unimaginably wrong.”

Weatherill is also a supporter of same-sex marriage. In a September episode of Q&A he said the federal government should “get on with the business of passing the same-sex marriage legislation,” calling it “a pretty fundamental question of respect.”