Legal rights and social attitudes have leapfrogged the other states making us a national and global leader on LGBTIQA+ equality and inclusion.

But there is still a long way to go.

A legacy of past prejudice and discrimination is that LGBTIQA+ Tasmanians with the worst mental health outcomes of any LGBTIQA+ community in the nation.

Services for our community, and professional development in LGBTIQA+ issues for mainstream services, is chronically underfunded.

The University's "Tasmania Project" has shown LGBTIQA+ Tasmanians have above average housing risk and below average incomes, again because of discrimination.

Threats to our hard-won rights regularly rear their heads, as they do across the world.

The choice we face is this: will we continue to strive towards greater inclusion and equality, or will we rest on our laurels and even slide backwards?

The three main parties have provided their answers to this question.

Labor and the Greens have set out LGBTIQA+ policies that are not only their most comprehensive ever, but the most forward-thinking in the nation.

Both parties support important law reform like banning conversion practices, banning medically-unnecessary surgeries on intersex kids and providing financial redress for those convicted under our former anti-gay and anti-trans laws.

Both parties support increased funding for mental health, inclusive schools and training for service providers.

One of the reasons Labor and the Greens are showing the way forward is their pre-selection of LGBTIQA+ candidates.

Since Alison Standen left state parliament in 2021, Tasmania has been the only state or territory without a single out LGBTIQA+ person at a state or federal level.

Hopefully, this will change given the strong field of out election candidates including Labor's Ben Dudman in Lyons and Stuart Benson in Clark, and the Greens Damien Briggs in Braddon and Lauren Ball in Bass, and independents like Martine Delaney in Franklin.

The Liberals have made some important promises.

They have committed $500,000 to LGBTIQA+ services, community grants, policy development and an Action Plan.

They have also taken a stand against the global anti-LGBTIQA+ backlash.

They have promised not to weaken Tasmania's gold-standard discrimination and gender recognition laws, or conduct an unnecessary inquiry into health care for young trans people.

They also won't support moves to beat up moral panics and infringe parental rights by banning LGBTIQA+ books or drag story time.

Unfortunately, the millstone around the Liberals' neck is a fatally flawed bill about conversion practices.

In 2022 Premier Rockliff promised a bill based on the recommendations of the experts at the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute.

But the final bill, so full of holes it will allow most conversion practices to continue, turned out to be based more on the demands of the Australian Christian Lobby.

Our hope is that, if the Liberals are returned, the widespread criticism their conversion bill has attracted will result in a new bill that will actually do the job.

The next four years will determine whether Tasmania continues to move beyond the historic discrimination and stigma faced by LGBTIQA+ people, or whether we bend to those who want this discrimination to continue.

If you are LGBTIQA+, love an LGBTIQA+ person or just want our state to be a happier, more tolerant and more open place, please consider where candidates stand on LGBTIQA+ issues when you vote on March 23rd.

Rodney Croome, spokesperson for Equality Tasmania

SO THE second worst Prime Minister, besides Abbott, has left parliament choking back tears. Bet they weren't for asylum seekers or robo debt victims but, as usual, off to some corporate job that will do no good the poor people.

Michael Robinson, Beauty Point

WILL the Jacqui Lambie Network (JLN) have the "Teal effect" effect in reverse at the forthcoming Tasmanian state election?

In the last federal election, the so-called Teal candidates extracted vital votes away from the Liberal Party, whereas in Tasmania, will vital JLN votes be derived from the Labor Party, thus reducing Labor's primary vote in four of the five JLN contested electorates?

Kenneth Gregson, Swansea