HIST30004 A History of Sexualities: Decriminalisation

Julian Phillips

Julian Phillips (dob-dod) was a senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Melbourne and for a brief period acted as Vice-Chancellor. He was an outspoken advocate for social justice and active in reforming various social issues including industrial law, the status of women, equal opportunity, sentencing, and homosexuality and its decriminalisation.

As a member of the Equal Opportunity Advisory Council, Julian Phillips advised the Victorian Premier on matters of race, age, sexual and gender discrimination.

In an interview with Graham Willett in 2004 he discussed his involvement in homosexual law reform as beginning with his work as a civil liberties lawyer called upon to represent men arrested for homosexual acts.

In 1973 as a member of the federal Committee on Discrimination in Employment he was located in Premier Hamer’s office and assisted by a research assistant went through the Attorney General’s Department files on homosexual offences and arrests. The information obtained from this work was important in persuading even conservatives of the need for law reform.

In 1973, after the federal parliament passed a motion endorsing the principle of decriminalisation, Phillips was one of those involved in discussions with the Attorney General on how to implement such a reform.

In 1974 he was located in Washington DC working for the Australian government on equal opportunity issues. In the course of this work he became aware of state legislation in the US which was organised around an age of consent for sexual matters which worked with a ‘sliding scale’ whereby, rather than an absolute age of consent, individuals were allowed to engage in sexual behaviour with others who were no more than two years older or younger than themselves.

At another point in time he was in Copenhagen and became convinced that pornography served not to exacerbate sex crime but rather to reduce its frequency. He sought and obtained permission to import pornography into Australia for research purposes.

After a highly-publicised round of police entrapment of homosexual men at Black Rock Beach in 1976, the Victorian government turned its attention to the issue of the decriminalisation of homosexual acts between men. Julian Phillips, as a member [chair?] of the Equal Opportunity Advisory Committee, played an important role in this, liaising with gay activists, police, public servants. The legislation that was presented to Parliament in 1980 was strongly influenced by his work.

In 2016-2017, a review of his papers – supported by the Melbourne Engagement Grants Scheme, revealed the extent of his involvement in matters relating to homosexuality and transgender people.

The involvement with transgender issues began with an approach by a group of self-described transsexuals, soon organised into the Victorian Transsexuals Coalition. This is an aspect of Australian trans history that provides an opportunity for future research.

As too does a discussion about the possibility of the expungement of criminal records, something that was applied to homosexual offences in Victoria only in 2015.