New Zealand’s Conservative PM supports gay marriage – but not Tony Abbott. Have the would-be PM’s views on homosexuality changed since his uni days? Garry Wotherspoon takes a trip down memory lane.

Is it fanciful to think there are people in Australia today who want to roll back the civil rights equality that lesbians and gays have achieved over the past quarter century?

Let us not forget the attacks on the gay community that have come from conservative politicians like former state National Party MP Peter Rowland-Smith, who wanted the Mardi Gras parade to be banned from Sydney streets; or Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan, Howard’s bovver-boy, who made false accusations under Parliamentary privilege against High Court Justice Michael Kirby; or the National Party’s then Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson, who wanted a book featuring two lesbians and their children to be banned from schools.

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