Greg Smith

Gregory Francis Smith SC served as Attorney-General of New South Wales from April 2011 to April 2014 in the O’Farrell government. During his tenure, the Crimes Amendment (Provocation) Act 2014 was enacted, abolishing the partial defence of provocation in its common law form — the legal mechanism that had allowed perpetrators in multiple anti-gay murders to have murder charges reduced to manslaughter on the grounds that a same-sex advance constituted adequate provocation.

The so-called “gay panic” or “homosexual advance” defence had been available in NSW for thirty years after decriminalisation. The ACON report In Pursuit of Truth and Justice (2018) documented multiple cases in which the defence was successfully invoked, resulting in reduced sentences and contributing to an environment of legal impunity for perpetrators of anti-gay violence. It was described at the time of repeal as “the most homophobic legal defence on the state’s statute books.” Its abolition in 2014 — three decades after decriminalisation — represented a significant, if long-delayed, legislative milestone.

The repeal occurring under Smith’s watch means that, for the entire period covered by this project (1970–2010) and for the fourteen years of NSW homicide law that followed, the gay panic defence existed as a formal legal protection for perpetrators. This is directly relevant to the accountability analysis of multiple cases in this project where convictions resulted in manslaughter rather than murder findings.

Tenure dates sourced from Wikipedia: Greg Smith (Australian politician). Wikipedia is used for reference only; substantive claims are sourced to primary documents cited elsewhere in this project.