It is by exploring these themes that Joseph Chetcuti has done a service for all Australians.  His book travels far beyond the LGBTIQ community in New South Wales.  He had chronicled a change that occurred in one small part of the world’s surface.  He has rightly insisted that the changes that have happened cannot be laid solely at the door of events that took place on a single night or even in the months and years that followed.  Nor can the actors in the dramas of 1978 be viewed as divorced from countless others, in Australia and the world.  When it comes to the struggle to halt irrational, unscientific laws and attitudes towards LGBTIQ people, this has to be viewed as a global phenomenon.  It is happening in different places, at a different speed, with different motivations and different opponents.  A realisation of these truths will make Australian readers of this book more conscious of the needs for self-criticism at home and engagement with, and support of, those still struggling overseas.

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The Hon Michael Kirby AC CMG