Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air
This week, New Zealand Parliament near-unanimously passed legislation to ban conversion therapy. John Pulu caught up with the face of the movement, activist Shaneel Lal to discuss this “win for human rights.”
“The Conversion therapy ban has been a very long time in the making,” Lal told Pulu.
“The ban on conversion therapy is a win for human rights, it’s a win for humanity – not just the queer community.
The queer community do not need to be tolerated or accepted, we need to be liberated. And I believe that ending conversion therapy is a beginning to liberating queer people,” adds Lal.
Lal has been at the forefront of the Ban Conversion Therapy since 2019, when he was selected as Labour MP Hon Jenny Salesa’s representative Youth MP. Lal spoke about banning conversion therapy for his speech at Youth Parliament, which sparked “the beginning of a very long movement,” Lal says.
They made international headlines with their speech, and eventually went on to create the Conversion Therapy Action Group. Three years of petitions, writing letters to MP’s and Select Committee Submissions, now Lal exclaims, “we’ve finally gotten the ban.”
“[But] there’s something really special that happened,” they say.
“All the Pacific members of Parliament voted in favour of banning conversion therapy – that has never happened in the past. That is something that we need to celebrate, there’s a resounding amount of support from our Pacific members of Parliament, for the queer community.”
And once again Lal’s work has made international headlines, including a coveted feature in Vogue.
While this is a huge milestone for Aotearoa’s rainbow community, for Lal the work is not done.
“Banning conversion therapy…is not the same as ending conversion therapy. The ban relies on a criminal ban, that means that we will wait for someone to offend, we will catch them and hopefully prosecute them.”
“Ending conversion therapy is about changing the hearts and minds of entire generations of people so that they know that being queer is okay. And that comes through education.”
