'It has to be good': Tony Ayres on telling diverse stories on-screen

This is an edited extract of Tony Ayres’ essay ‘From My Life to All Lives: From Identity to Representation’, in Living and Loving in Diversity: An anthology of Australian multicultural queer adventures (Wakefield Press). I didn't have a traumatic time coming out; it happened when I was 16 years old and told my history teacher that I was gay. He randomly took me to an illegal casino to ‘celebrate’. By then, I was an orphan,…