Episode 3

Fran, thanks so much for joining this session.

Really appreciate your making time to talk about this critical point in actually New Zealand's history and the critical role that you played in it.

Just acknowledging that I've known you for more than 40 years, babysat your children during the campaign for homosexual law reform, given that we lived quite adjacent to each other and subsequently had the pleasure not only of working on your campaign in 1981, but also obviously on the homosexual law reform campaign and then as a city councillor when you were the mayor.

So just want to give a big shout out to your extraordinary contribution to this country and what a great privilege it is for me to have known you for that long.

Kia ora Stephen, thank you for that lovely welcome and it's great to be here today to recall and I think celebrate the gains we made 40 years ago, which seems a long time now.

But there it is.

Still a long way to go, which no doubt we'll talk about.

So, Fran, the first question I want to ask you is that I've read quite a bit about the background to homosexual law reform with various bills suggested by then Young and then Warren Freer and then the Equality Bill.

Why was it that you ended up with the Homosexual Law Reform Bill and what were your personal drivers about taking this incredibly brave step?

Well, I was lobbied, as I think all candidates were, pre the 1981 election, which is when I went into Parliament and asked if I would support this legislation if it were introduced.

And I said, yes, of course I would.

It's long overdue.

And then after the election...

the same people came back to me and said, oh, well, by the way, Fran, congratulations.

And we're looking for somebody to introduce the bill, which had never occurred to me.

So I thought about it, not for too long.

I was a young heterosexual woman in a very liberal seat.

Wellington Central was probably the most liberal seat in the country.

And I figured out that my electorate would support it and probably be quite helpful for me in it.

and that my personal circumstances meant that nobody could suggest I was doing this for personal gain of any sort.

So I said I would do it.

I don't think I had quite the appreciation of what it would mean.

I'm not sure any of us did, actually, before the bill was introduced.

Maybe some had, but the campaign was very torrid, and I guess...

If you had been living in New Zealand for all that time as a gay man, you would have understood what it meant.