 Reports about a gay property developer’s departure from the north-west Tasmanian town of Penguin have projected an image of a homophobic island state where gay entrepreneurs are unwelcome, write Adam Bub and Andrew Shaw.
Tasmania has attracted a growing community of gay entrepreneurs moving from the mainland for a lifestyle change and a new start in business. Nearly 1,300 new immigrants moved to Tasmania in the year up to September 2007, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. In February 2007, the ABS reported that 536 new businesses registered in Tasmania in the preceding financial year.
One of these immigrants is Stephen Roche (pictured below), who, along with his partner Keith Westerby, moved from Sydney to the town of Penguin in Tasmania’s north-west four years ago. Roche established the Penguin Markets and had plans to redevelop the town’s sea front.
His decision earlier this month to leave Penguin and return to Sydney was picked up by the national media. It should have been a straight forward yarn: a failed development, a gay developer, a small town in Tassie – it was homophobia, plain and simple. But Roche wasn’t playing along.
“I don’t feel as though I’ve been pushed out at all,” he told the Melbourne Age. “It’s a very small minority that have had any sort of homophobic prejudice.”
The developer’s gracious withdrawal drew scepticism from some, coming as it did after last year's media reports that there had been anti-gay pamphlets distributed to some homes in the area. Roche received a death threat; the couple found a dead wallaby tied to their front door.
Julian Punch, state co-ordinator of the Coming Out Proud Program, told GayTas Roche should not downplay the homophobia in rural Tasmania. “It doesn’t explain to us, nor to the press on the mainland, the death threats Stephen got this time last year,” Punch says of Roche’s statement on his departure.
Punch cites an incident involving three men who threw beer on a gay apprentice working at a hotel, then carved ‘faggots food’ and ‘AIDS food’ on the hotel windows. He tells of a gay couple who want to sell up and get out after a neighbour grabbed a shotgun every time they went onto their property, shouting, “Poofter, faggot, I’m gonna kill you!”
“There’s incidents of this happening all over the state,” Punch says. “There’s no use going soft on it just because Stephen wants a safe investment environment to sell and get out of Tasmania. The government’s got to do something about it before it gets out of control.”
Punch believes the developer’s experience should prompt the state government to take greater measures to combat homophobia in rural communities by working with sectors including health, education and the police.
However, Rodney Croome, spokesperson for the Tasmanian Gay and Lesbian Rights Group, says Julian Punch unfairly stereotypes rural Tasmania as homophobic.
“Opinion polls have shown improving attitudes in rural and regional areas,” Croome says. “In a way which was inconceivable in Tasmania up until a few years ago, prejudice against Stephen Roche has been publicly denounced by local mayors, ministers of religion, businesspeople, Liberal politicians, sporting icons and the press, showing how much rural Tasmania has changed, not how little.”
Croome says the Tasmanian government has taken more steps to
combat homophobia than any other state government.
"The Tasmanian health, education and police departments have had formal
liaison with the GLBT community for up to 10 years. They’ve put in
place an unprecedented range of policies and programs to address
homophobia, including in rural areas.
"The Education Department has issued mandatory anti-homophobia
guidelines for all Tasmanian schools, and allocated
$50,000 for a six-week anti-homophobia course for Grade 8 students
out to rural high schools last year. The police have gay and lesbian
contact officers, including in rural areas.
"The point here is that while homophobia still exists
in rural Tasmania, as it exists in rural areas across Australia,
there’s more being done to tackle that homophobia in Tasmania than
anywhere else.”
And what of Penguin, the pleasant, seaside town at the centre of Australia’s latest pink dollar scare? When GayTAS contacted local business owners, the feelings towards Stephen Roche were clear: ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’
“You have to come to Penguin to understand,” one source says. “It’s a very beautiful, quaint town. Although the majority of people were all for development, [Roche’s] wasn’t in good taste for the town.
“Steve’s a nice guy, I’ve got nothing against him. I used to wave to him when he went jogging on the beach every morning. It’s unfortunate that what he wanted to do wasn’t what was wanted.”
There were concerns over Roche’s four- and five-storey buildings – they would have been the tallest in town. Standing 10 metres from the shoreline, they would easily overshadow the beach. Mainland papers reported community opposition to the plans, which would redevelop Penguin as a Gold Coast-style holiday destination, featuring a shopping strip, apartments and a boutique hotel.
Penguin’s story feeds into the popular myth that gays and lesbians are continually looking to convert desirable locations into places suitable only for their own kind. In this myth – reinforced by recent political shenanigans on the Sunshine Coast, where one councillor was accused by another of turning Noosa into the “gay capital of Australia” – gays and lesbians are cast as cuckoos, sidling their way into the community nest in order to push out the original inhabitants.
Roche’s vision for Penguin may or may not have involved a gay-dominated mega-resort. Homophobic attacks, a premeditated business strategy (a national campaign to sell his interests in "Penguin's top 10 development sites" launches this weekend), or a combination of both may have prompted his departure. But the scale of Roche's story has overshadowed the hundreds of other success stories of gay mainlanders living in rural Tasmania.
To escape the stress of their public sector jobs, two South Australian men moved to southern Tasmania in 1996 to start a bed and breakfast. One of the men, who asked to remain anonymous, told GayTas the south was “a lovely place to live”.
“Sections of the local community are very supportive,” he says. “There are other sections which probably aren’t, but we haven’t experienced any direct homophobia… Some guests become less chatty after realising the B&B is run by gay partners, but mostly they slink off to their room or go out.”
His partner says the Tasmanian gay community is well connected, thanks to the League of Gentlemen network co-ordinated by Julian Punch, and the Coming Out Proud Program. He says Stephen Roche’s plans to “redesign the community” in Penguin caused more resentment toward him and his partner than his sexuality, which was used as a pawn in the development battle. “Their situation was vastly different to ours: we slipped into a little community and didn’t make a lot of waves.”
This more positive image is the one the pair want mainlanders to see: “I don’t think people should be deterred by this, particularly the touring public. Because I really do think that with the changes of legislation that have occurred down here, Tasmania probably is a more accepting, tolerant society.”
Tasmanian Department of Economic Development and Tourism spokesperson Sam Adams says despite individually held discriminatory views, “local government, the State Government and the wider community were united in their condemnation of those views”.
Adams says that since 1998 successive Labor governments have “led the nation in developing policies, agreements and strategies with the participation of the GLBT communities at all levels".
It seems fitting that the final word go to Stephen Roche. Late Friday afternoon, as this story is going online, the phone rings and it's Roche calling from Penguin.
He talks briefly about his plans: travel overseas then a return to Sydney in June. He has nothing to add to his press statements: he was not driven out by homophobia.
The Penguin Markets are still there, he says, and he's made a lot of good friends in Penguin over the last four years. And he has approval for further development.
"I hope the developments we've got approval for go ahead," he says. "I think it's worthwhile."
You can have your say on Stephen Roche, Penguin and what's being done to combat homphobia in your region – comment below.
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