In late February, national news media picked up on a story in the town of Penguin, Tasmania. A pamphlet circulating around the town targeted two of the town’s citizens. It read: ‘If the buildings houses [sic] set at the sea front along the Main Street of Penguin are not heritage listed than the gay Sydney property developers will be able to buy up all the beach front houses knock them down and build penthouse apartments. Who will benefit from those penthouse apartments, not Tasmanians… no the people that will be able to come and buy and live in these apartments will be cashed up Sydney gay men’.
‘Think of your children… We can say NO to the cashed up Sydney gay penthouse builders and there [sic] gay friends’.
Stephen Roche, one of the Sydney developers mentioned in the homophobic smear campaign, recently talked to OUTinPerth about the experience:
‘We moved down here about 3 years ago. We bought an old arts and crafts market and did an almost $3 billion renovation to that. There were objections to that development initially and I guess that’s when we started to notice that people were objecting not just on development grounds. We had signage around town defaced. We had a wallaby gutted and tied to our front door. We had death threats’.
Despite the hate campaign conducted by ‘a small minority’, Mr. Roche believes that Tasmania ‘in some ways, leads the nation with political law reform. I can’t tell you the support that we’ve had from right across the state. Every political party came out saying they were disgusted with what had happened. I’ve received cards all week. We’ve been inundated with phone calls, emails. It’s just been amazing, and it has created national media attention’.
