How a police raid lawsuit turned tide for gay Victoria (2024)

On a wintry night in 1994, illuminated by strobing technicolour laser beams as techno beats pulsed, Shaun Miller thought he was in his safe space.

For the 27-year-old law graduate still determining his path in life, Tasty was a Saturday night ritual when he revelled in gay abandon among his queer family.

Across the dancefloor, lawyer Gary Singer and his friends were ending their night out with a dance and a few drinks at the now-famed venue.

Tasty was a minnow compared to other nightclubs in Melbourne's city centre. Hidden down a laneway off Flinders Lane, it was one of the few welcoming LGBTQI people in the '90s.

As they danced well past midnight, a sudden blinding yellowish-white glare enveloped the floor.

The thumping music petered out to the sound of a smoke machine whirring to life as it oozed a white haze onto the floor, where the startled hordes had been carefree moments ago.

"Everybody put your hands against the wall or behind your head," a flurry of voices rang through the nightclub.

"This is a police raid."

At 2.10am on August 7, about 40 Victoria Police officers emerged through the smoke.

Stunned patrons stood immobilised, fearful of receiving an officer's bark if they dared drop their straining limbs from the wall or their heads.

So they waited, some for several hours, as hushed whispers spread around the venue, alerting others to their fate.

Police herded groups of the 463 male and female patrons into the club's bathrooms and enclaves.

Mr Singer and his friends were ushered down a hallway to a narrow cloakroom and pointed one into each corner.

Take off your clothes, ordered the officer.

"They shone a torch on you and said bend over," Mr Singer recounted.

"Then they shone the light up your a***."

On the other side, Mr Miller was being led to a bathroom where eight to 10 others were already waiting.

Standing metres ahead in plain view, a man removed his underwear beside a policeman with a torch in hand.

He found himself in the same spot with his T-shirt and pants in hand and underwear at his ankles issued with the same order - bend over.

"I just went along with it just as you would see in totalitarian regimes where people succumb and acquiesce to police intimidation."

Marched back through the club, passing the fearful faces of those awaiting their turn, Mr Miller was bundled out the door into the cold light of day.

At the time, Victoria Police officers had been given powers to strip-search people if they had a warrant or reasonable grounds to suspect criminal activity.

"There was a hom*ophobic lens through which the Tasty raid was done," Mr Miller said. "How can you reasonably suspect 463 people to all have drugs?"

In 1969, a monumental shift catalysed the LGBTQI civil rights movement in the US after LGBTQI protesters confronted and resisted police as they raided New York's Stonewall Inn gay bar and arrested hundreds of people, leading to the Stonewall Uprising.

"This was our equivalent," Mr Singer said.

The culture of police surveillance, intrusion and violence pervaded queer spaces through to the 1990s while public attitudes towards the community were lukewarm at best.

Victoria had only decriminalised hom*osexuality in 1980, but it was still illegal in NSW, Western Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

People identified from the night were outed to their families and friends and some lost their jobs. One man was sent hate mail by his mother after she found out he was gay.

"So many other people were traumatised," Mr Miller said. "To the point where some people who saw police or went to a nightclub subsequently felt uncomfortable and triggered."

But Tasty also marked a turning point for Victoria's LGBQTI community.

Details of the raid had filtered through the local media, painting an egregious, heavy-handed, violent and over-the-top response from police.

"It reshaped the narrative around who is an ideal victim or who's able to claim victimhood status," said University of Melbourne gender studies researcher Joshua Pocius.

"The middle-class society was shocked," Mr Singer said. "The community was always divided on opinion, but generally, people were not happy."

Even Jeff Kennett, the state's conservative Liberal premier who had been expanding police powers, labelled the raid as "disturbing and extreme".

As the Tasty raid reaches its 30th anniversary, it remains a defining yet obscure chapter of Australia's LGBTQI history.

Part of that came from what the hundreds of men and women achieved in the aftermath, and what Dr Pocius described as changes by Victoria Police to "wrest control of the narrative".

As Mr Singer walked home angry and humiliated in the early hours of Sunday morning, he made a promise.

"I would do something when I got to work on Monday," he said. "I'm a lawyer and the best way to get change is to hit people in the hip pocket."

What came next was a David and Goliath battle fought not with protests, but in the courts.

"It was very hard to win (a case against police) because the courts often believe the police," Mr Singer said.

In the six-week trial with marketing director Sally Gordon as the lead plaintiff, a stream of witnesses all wanted to tell their story.

"Here we had more victims than police so the court had to take note of the overwhelming evidence that confirmed our version of events," he said.

"It got to a point where the judge said, 'No, look, I've heard enough from people who were there'."

The defence called on 37 police officers to give evidence.

"They all got up and lied. It was incredible," Mr Singer said. "They said everyone was happy and everyone was pleased and consented to being strip-searched."

"It was a total whitewash, which the judge saw right through."

The judge found police conduct "went beyond the powers allowed under the terms of a search warrant" and awarded Ms Gordon $10,000 in damages.

Of the 463 people at the club, two were arrested on drug charges but none stuck. One person turned out to have aspirin.

It would take three years, but the landmark win opened the floodgates for hundreds of lawsuits from others, costing the police about $6 million in settlements.

"It was recognition that we might have been the victims of the action, but we were the victors in the courts and in the court of public opinion," Mr Singer said.

Victoria Police have since invested in community engagement with gay and lesbian liaison officers.

On the raid's 20th anniversary the acting chief commissioner, Lucinda Nolan, apologised for the distress caused by police among the LGBTQI community that night and the impact on their relationship since.

While relationships mend, the scars from that night will never fully heal.

For some, police marching in Victoria's annual LGBTQI festival Midsumma went against the concept of Pride that originated in the Stonewall Uprising as a protest against police.

A confrontation between protesters and police members marching in the Midsumma Pride Festival in February led to scuffles and the subsequent arrests of queer protesters.

"Tasty figures in the cultural memory as one example, among many, of why queer communities would be hesitant to engage fully with the police," Dr Pocius said.

But Mr Miller, who accepted the police apology, saw it as much-needed progress from not that long ago when things were very bad for the community.

"If someone holds out an olive branch, you take it and you keep moving forward."

Australian Associated Press