Supporting the Equality and Human Rights of the LGBTIQ Community
Thank you for the opportunity to provide this short submission to inform the Commonwealth Government’s development of its 2024-25 Budget.
I do so as a long-standing advocate on behalf of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) community.
In this capacity I submit the following four priorities for increased funding to support the realisation of equality and other fundamental human rights of LGBTIQ Australians.
Commissioner for Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Sex Characteristics at the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC)
The Commonwealth Government should fund the creation of a Commissioner for Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Sex Characteristics (SOGISC) within the AHRC.
Currently, there are Commissioners for:
Race
Sex
Disability
Age
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice
Children, and
Human Rights.
However, when discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status was prohibited through passage of the Sex Discrimination Amendment (Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Intersex Status) Act 2013, no equivalent position was established for our community.
The consequence of this omission is that responsibility within the AHRC for advocating on discrimination affecting LGBTIQ people has floated variously between the President, Human Rights Commissioner and Sex Discrimination Commissioner – with no permanent home, and therefore no sustained focus on the realisation of LGBTIQ human rights.
At the moment, responsibility for what is sometimes called the ‘LGBTIQ portfolio’ lies with Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody, who is somehow supposed to deal with the myriad issues affecting LGBTIQ Australians after they have addressed discrimination affecting women. They are supported in targeting LGBTIQ discrimination by just one dedicated full-time adviser, in contrast to the full team of advisers that support Commissioners on other topic areas.
This situation is simply not good enough. LGBTIQ equality and human rights deserve the same attention as other cohorts. This should be rectified by:
Funding the creation of a stand-alone Commissioner for Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Sex Characteristics within the AHRC
Supported by a team of advisers of the same size, and with the same resourcing, as existing Commissioners for Race, Disability and Age Discrimination.
2. National Strategy Against Anti-LGBTIQ Prejudice
The past 12 months have seen a dramatic escalation in anti-LGBTIQ violence and vilification across Australia, including:
The TERF and neo-Nazi rally against trans people in Melbourne in March 2023
The religious fundamentalist (‘Christian Lives Matter’) riot against queer protestors in Sydney in March 2023, and
Fascist and far-right attempts to intimidate and shut down queer and queer-related community events, including drag story times, around the country.
As far as I am aware, there has been no formal, co-ordinated Commonwealth Government response to the rise of anti-LGBTIQ extremism during this time.
This stands in contrast to the Government’s commitment to addressing racism, including through its funding for and support of the development of a National Anti-Racism Framework (with work being undertaken by the AHRC).
Indeed, Commonwealth Minister for Multicultural Affairs Andrew Giles MP cited neo-Nazi incidents as a justification for the Anti-Racism Framework. As reported by the Guardian:[1]
“There have been at least two neo-Nazi incidents on the streets of Melbourne in recent times, and that lends a sense of urgency.” It was “more important than ever to have a society that is anchored in a sense that we all deserve to be valued.”
This overlooks the fact that, as noted above, one of, if not the most, prominent neo-Nazi event in 2023 was the TERF and neo-Nazi rally against trans rights on the steps of Victorian Parliament in March 2023.
If that incident provides justification for an Anti-Racism Framework, surely it must also provide justification, and motivation, for the Commonwealth Government to fund and develop a National Strategy Against Anti-LGBTIQ Prejudice.
After all, LGBTIQ Australians, and especially trans and gender diverse Australians, also ‘deserve to be valued’.
3. Gender affirming healthcare
Trans and gender diverse Australians should have the ability to live their authentic lives. For many, although not all, this involves accessing gender affirming healthcare, including (but not limited to) hormone treatments and gender affirmation surgical procedures.
However, for far too many trans and gender diverse people, this health care is financially out of reach, with prohibitive out-of-pocket costs attached to hormones, surgeries and other services.
This is a denial of the fundamental right to healthcare for people on the basis of who they are. It also carries significant consequences, with this lack of access contributing to higher rates of mental health issues, depression and even self-harm.
Gender affirming healthcare can be life-saving – while its denial can have the opposite outcome. This healthcare is not elective, but essential, and should be funded as such.
The Commonwealth Government should therefore use the 2024-25 Budget to remove out-of-pocket costs for gender affirming healthcare, including hormones, surgeries and other medical services which assist trans and gender diverse people live authentically.
4. A National Intersex Community-Controlled Healthcare Service
Finally, I am aware of a Pre-Budget Submission from Intersex Human Rights Australia (IHRA), which includes the following recommendation:
That the government provides $2,100,000 in annual resourcing to develop and sustain an intersex community-controlled healthcare service, to support the provision of biopsychosocial health and medical services for people with innate variations of sex characteristics and families, and support provision of policy advice to government. The service will be developed and run by Intersex Human Rights Australia, which currently provides advocacy and pilot psychosocial support services [emphasis in original].
I unreservedly endorse this call. The health needs of the intersex community are currently not being met by the Australian healthcare system, with manifestly inadequate resourcing undermining health outcomes for many intersex people.
IHRA is well-placed to contribute to the process of addressing these shortcomings, with what is a modest sum of money. As noted in their Pre-Budget Submission:
This proposal ensures that IHRA can support the currently unmet healthcare needs of children, parents and carers, prospective parents, and adults, across the lifespan, and beyond current funding arrangements. It incidentally seeks to ensure the sustainability of IHRA as an intersex community-controlled healthcare service provider…
It is my sincere hope funding can be found for this initiative in the upcoming Budget.
Please do not hesitate to content me, at the details provided, should you require additional information in relation to this submission.
Thank you in advance to taking these priorities into consideration.
Sincerely
Alastair Lawrie
Will Treasurer Jim Chalmers deliver on any of the above four priorities in Tuesday’s Budget?
[I wrote this piece about 10 days ago, in the lead-up to the anniversary of the horrific events at Victorian Parliament in March last year. Unfortunately, it wasn’t picked up by media outlets – but the past week has made these comments even more urgent, so I am publishing it here.]
One year ago last Monday (on Saturday 18 March 2023), Australians witnessed the horrific sight of neo-Nazis turning up to an anti-trans rally on the steps of Victorian Parliament, holding a banner saying ‘destroy paedo freaks’ and performing Nazi salutes.
It was a chilling reminder of the serious threat posed by right-wing extremism to LGBTIQ communities in general, and trans and gender diverse people in particular.
Rather than being a one-off, that awful anti-LGBTIQ spectacle was just the first in a long line of rallies and related hate speech threatening our communities over the past 12 months.
Within days, so-called ‘Christian Lives Matter’ members engaged in what can only be described as a riot against peaceful LGBTIQ protestors (and NSW Police) in the Sydney suburb of Belfield.
April onwards saw a dramatic rise in threats of violence and intimidation by right-wing extremists across the country, directed to local councils and libraries holding Drag Story Times.
Most recently, the ABC was forced to cancel a Drag Story Time that was to be held in conjunction with the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras following death threats against their employees.
The attacks on our communities have been terrifying. They have been relentless. And they are part of a disturbing international trend of intolerance.
But where has the Commonwealth Government been when we have needed their leadership?
They were quick to introduce legislation to ban the display of Nazi hate symbols, later amended to also prohibit the Nazi salute. This was welcome, but addresses only part of the problem.
A group of thugs intimidating trans people with a banner saying ‘destroy paedo freaks’ is a serious issue irrespective of what clothes they wear, flags they fly or salutes they perform.
Sadly, though, we have not seen the Albanese Government respond to the rise in anti-LGBTIQ right-wing extremism with the seriousness it deserves.
We have not seen or heard clear and consistent condemnation of growing homophobia, biphobia and transphobia, or even of the violent threats against community events.
There has been no commitment to introduce much-needed Commonwealth laws prohibiting anti-LGBTIQ vilification.
And no open engagement with LGBTIQ communities about the threats we face, or additional funds committed to help with our safety.
Instead, it has been left to unfunded groups like Rainbow Community Angels, who attempt to make events like Drag Story Time a safe place for attendees, to stand up against the far-right, unassisted.
It’s possible the Government would say that primary responsibility for these issues lies with states and territories, but these are problems that call for national leadership.
By contrast, faith communities have been actively engaged and largely supported when they have raised concerns about intolerance.
Government representatives, from Prime Minister Albanese down, have spoken up in recent months against religious hate speech, particularly in the form of anti-semitism. The Government has made repeated promises to introduce religious vilification laws, expected to be tabled within weeks.
[NB Since this piece was written, the Government has confirmed it is pushing ahead with these amendments, separate to the Religious Discrimination Bill and any Sex Discrimination Act changes, meaning it may be the only part of those overall reforms that actually pass.]
And $40 million in Commonwealth funding for the safety of religious organisations was announced by Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus last May (on the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia no less).
The LGBTIQ community can’t even convince the Government to create and appoint a stand-alone LGBTIQ+ Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission. LGBTIQ issues remain a part-time, ad hoc responsibility of the Sex Discrimination Commissioner.
Promises to address anti-LGBTIQ vilification, and funding for LGBTIQ community safety, remain nowhere to be seen.
I’m a 45-year old cis gay man. I grew up in Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland, and survived five years at a deeply homophobic religious boarding school. Coming out of, and coming out after, that environment was tough.
But the rise in overt, targeted, public bigotry over the past 12 months has left me feeling less safe than at any time since the 1990s.
What has made things worse is the silence and inaction of the Albanese Government. This has left me, and many others in our community, feeling forgotten too.
Source: Herald Sun.
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As the dust settles on the recent federal election, and the new Albanese Labor Government settles into office, I wanted to take this short(ish) opportunity to reflect on the term of Parliament just ended, and especially its impact on LGBTIQ Australians.
To the surprise of few readers of this blog, the reflection of the past three years in the rear-view mirror (now thankfully receding into the distance) is far from pretty. Indeed, in my opinion, the 2019-2022 term of the Morrison Liberal/National Government was the worst for LGBTIQ people in my lifetime, by some margin.
There are many reasons for arriving at this conclusion, chief among them the Religious Discrimination Bill, which came to dominate the Morrison Government’s legislative agenda, especially in its dying days.
Remember, this was a law that sought to legally protect offensive, humiliating, insulting and ridiculing comments against women, LGBT people, people with disability and people of minority faiths. By over-riding existing state and territory anti-discrimination laws, it also procedurally denied access to justice for victims of discrimination.
The Coalition’s Religious Discrimination Bill featured the broadest special privileges allowing religious organisations to discriminate against employees and people accessing their services of any anti-discrimination law in Australia.
If passed, it could have entrenched existing discrimination against LGBT students ‘under the guise of religious views’ – while it definitely would have permitted new forms of discrimination against LGBT teachers by over-riding states and territories that had already protected them.
And even though LGBT people were obviously not the only targets of what I would describe as legislated hatred, I don’t think anyone would deny that denying the rights of LGBT Australians was a primary motivator both for the Morrison Government itself, and for the religious fundamentalists who supported the Bill.
But the Religious Discrimination Bill was by no means the only attack on LGBTIQ people by the Morrison Government.
In the final 12 months alone, we saw all bar six Liberal and National Party Senators vote for a One Nation motion calling for an end to gender-affirming and supporting health care for trans children and teenagers (in June 2021).
In September, the Coalition also rejected straight-forward amendments to the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) which would have seen trans, gender diverse and intersex workers protected on exactly the same basis as others, including lesbian, gay and bisexual workers (for more, see: Pathetic, and antipathetic, in equal measure).
In February 2022, on the very day that the Religious Discrimination Bill was finally abandoned, Tasmanian Liberal Senator Claire Chandler introduced legislation seeking to ban trans women and girls from participating in sport. Despite being a private member’s bill, it was later explicitly and repeatedly supported by Morrison himself, and no doubt would have been a priority for his Government had they been re-elected.
And of course the election campaign itself was marred by the toxic transphobia of candidate for Warringah, Katherine Deves, hand-picked by Morrison himself in a transparent effort to invent a culture war and win the votes of bigots (for more, see: Ten months of transphobia).
Then there was the issue of LGBT students in religious schools, a topic about which the Morrison Government continually found new ways to disappoint, ultimately abandoning some of the most vulnerable members of the community.
Morrison had promised way back in October 2018 to protect LGBT kids before the end of that year – a commitment he spent the following three and a half years running away from (for more, see: Scott Morrison’s Broken Promise to Protect LGBT Students is Now Three Years Old). By the time he was booted from office, his broken promise to end discrimination against LGBT students was 1,318 days old (and yes, I was counting).
The appalling treatment of LGBT kids during the Religious Discrimination Bill debate in February demonstrates just how little he, and his Ministers, cared about this group. Not only did Morrison’s proposed amendments only seek to prohibit expulsion – which would have allowed religious schools to continue to mistreat students in 1,001 other ways, from differential treatment and exclusion, through to discipline, detention, suspension and even asking them to leave).
But the calculated choice to exclude trans and non-binary children from any and all protection whatsoever (and therefore only to prohibit the technical expulsion of lesbian, gay and bisexual kids), was a wholly-prejudiced policy so heinous it can never be forgiven, and that includes anyone who voted for it.
The mistreatment of LGBT students also neatly illustrates why the last term of Parliament was truly the worst of times because, as much as what made the past three years horrific were the constant attacks on our community, just as damaging in the long run was the Morrison Government’s failure to take action to address long-standing human rights abuses against LGBTIQ Australians.
Not least of which are coercive surgeries and other non-consenting medical interventions on children born with innate variations of sex characteristics (otherwise known as intersex children).
Now, as someone who is in their mid-40s, I’m old enough to recognise that the last term of Parliament is not the only three-year period which has been challenging for LGBTIQ Australians.
Indeed, I suspect readers are probably thinking of two other terms which were also brutal – the 2001-2004 term of the Howard Government during which the marriage ban was originally passed, and the 2016-2019 term of the Turnbull/Morrison Government, and especially the plebiscite debate and then postal survey.
But I would argue that neither was as relentlessly awful as the three years just concluded.
In terms of Howard, it was really only the final six months of the 2001-2004 term during which he sought to use same-sex marriage (as it was then called) as a wedge against the Labor Opposition – the first two and a half years were awful for other reasons (especially in the (mis)treatment of First Nations people, and people seeking asylum) but did not specifically target LGBTIQ Australians in the same way as the Morrison Government.
And in terms of the 2016-2019 term of the Turnbull (and later Morrison) Government, I absolutely acknowledge that the debate about the plebiscite, in the last half of 2016, and then the postal survey (which, let’s not forget, was the idea of now-Opposition Leader Peter Dutton) in the last half of 2017, were completely unnecessary, totally divisive and ultimately damaging for far too many LGBTIQ people.
At the same time, it was nevertheless a debate about improving the legal recognition of LGBTIQ relationships, and the Australian people eventually delivered marriage equality, which was a welcome and long-overdue step forward (no thanks to the Liberal Party, who must never be allowed to claim credit for this outcome – see: Liberals Claiming Credit for Marriage Equality Can Get in the Bin).
In contrast, the debate around the Religious Discrimination Bill concerned a law that sought to strip existing rights away from LGBT people, including protections against discrimination, and the ability to go about our day-to-day lives without being subjected to offensive, humiliating, insulting and ridiculing comments simply because of who we are.
The Religious Discrimination Bill debate also dragged on far longer than the plebiscite/postal survey – with the first exposure draft released in August 2019 (followed by a second in December of that year), and the Bill not stopped until February 2022 (30 months later).
I should at least acknowledge two additional contextual factors which help to explain just why the past three years have been so rough – although neither reduces the culpability of the Morrison Government for its actions.
The first is that there was obviously a cumulative effect of the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Government’s homophobia, biphobia, transphobia and anti-intersex discrimination. With the safe schools debate and decision to de-fund it occurring in the first term, and the plebiscite debate and postal survey (plus religious freedom review) in the second, the LGBTIQ community was already worn down by seemingly continuous debates about our lives.
Although, as the Treasurer who allocated funding for the plebiscite and then postal survey, Scott Morrison is responsible for a significant share of that accumulated stress.
The second is there is no doubt the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic since early 2020 has exacerbated the harms caused by the Morrison Government’s attacks on our community, especially because it left us isolated and alone in our homes when we needed each other for support and reinforcement to fight back against the Religious Discrimination Bill.
But once again, that context does nothing to exculpate the outgoing Government – indeed, the fact they were willing to push ahead with this divisive legislation, during bushfires, and floods, and a global pandemic, and instead of doing anything to alleviate climate change, only renders them more guilty.
There is one last question which needs to be addressed, and that is: why does writing this down matter? Especially post-election?
After all, the Morrison Government has been defeated. The country has (thankfully) moved on. While for the LGBTIQ community, we already know the past three years were the worst of times, because we endured them, and for many have the scars to prove it.
To which I say there are still (at least) two reasons for publishing this article.
The first is to ensure the Coalition’s homophobia, biphobia, transphobia and anti-intersex discrimination is properly recorded.
This is especially important as the Liberal Party inevitably tries to rewrite the history of the recent past, to present some kind of softer, kinder, gentler image to the electorate. But there was nothing soft, or kind, or gentle, about 2019, 2020, 2021, and early 2022 for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer Australians.
The second is because I think it helps to explain how many of us are feeling, right now. Yes, there is a sense of relief the attacks on us have ended (for now), but that welcome feeling doesn’t even begin to outweigh the sheer exhaustion from fighting constant battles over the last three, or six, or nine, years.
The tiredness in our collective bones.
On a personal level, and as an advocate with more than two decades experience, I will willingly concede the past three years have been the toughest of them all.
The end of 2021, when two years of a global pandemic was followed by the introduction of the final Religious Discrimination Bill in late November, was particularly rough. It is definitely no coincidence that, in late December, exactly three days after lodging our submissions to both Parliamentary inquiries into the Bill, I came down with shingles (the working title for this post was actually ‘Scott Morrison’s Homophobia Gave Me Shingles’ but I assumed, probably correctly, nobody would click on that).
My body was saying, loudly and clearly, enough. Especially as illness ruined the planned summer break, preventing me from seeing my parents in Queensland.
Of course, the Religious Discrimination Bill debate continued, relentless, rolling on into Committee hearings in early January and Parliamentary debate in early February. But so did my need to stand up for my community, and try to see it defeated. Which we did. Collectively. But it came with a significant cost.
For me, that was burnout worse than anything I have experienced before, and – being completely honest – which I’ve only just recovered from (and which helps to explain the lack of recent posts).
Anyway, the point of this is not to say ‘woe is me’ (I’m fine, now). But it is to acknowledge there are a lot of people still feeling pretty bruised and battered by the past three years. And so we should try to show the care towards each other that the Morrison Government didn’t.
Together, we saw off the Religious Discrimination Bill. Together, we can put the worst of times behind us.
NB This post is written in a personal capacity, and does not reflect the views of employers past or present.
Scott Morrison’s defeat ended the worst Commonwealth Parliamentary term for LGBTIQ rights in my lifetime.
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The ‘star candidate’ of the first week of the election campaign – for all the wrong reasons – has undoubtedly been the Liberal candidate for Warringah, Katherine Deves.
Hand-picked by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the head of anti-trans lobby group Save Women’s Sport Australasia has left a long trail of public comments for the media to scrutinise. And, well, the results aren’t pretty.
Already this week, they have reported on posts:
Describing trans kids as ‘surgically mutilated and sterilised’, while sharing topless images of a trans teenager who had undergone top surgery.
Saying she is ‘triggered’ by the rainbow pride flag (‘I get triggered by it. Whenever I see it on social media I think ‘What now? What are they demanding now?’ And I grew up with gay relatives and siblings and hung out in Surry Hills and X in Sydney in the 1990s. Lots of LGB family and friends, their movement has been destroyed.’)
Likening her lobbying against the participation of trans women and girls in sport to standing up against the Holocaust.[i]
Alleging ‘half of all males with trans identities are sex offenders’ (her tweet: ‘Half of all males with trans identities are sex offenders, compared with less than 20% for the rest of the male estate. That should tell you something.’), and
Belittling the serious mental health harms caused by transphobia (‘We hear from the other side the toll, all the harm, the devastation, we’re all going to commit suicide and blah blah’).
When confronted by the media about the above, Deves has been forced to apologise. It seems inevitable there will be more transphobic comments found, and more apologies, in coming days.
For people who only pay attention to federal politics every three years, Deves’ comments must seem bizarre, and extreme. And they are obviously both.
But, one thing they are *not* is an outlier.
Unfortunately, the Liberal candidate for Warringah’s views must be seen in the context of a rising tide of transphobia in Australian political discourse over the past six or seven years.
This includes the moral panic against the Safe Schools program in 2015 and early 2016, after which then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull first reviewed it, then ‘gutted’ its contents, before finally de-funding it completely.
And the same-sex marriage postal survey in the second half of 2017, which became a platform for groups opposing marriage equality to target trans and nonbinary children (indeed, one of the leading organisations against equality, the Marriage Alliance, has since become anti-trans lobby group Binary Australia).
Following his elevation to the Prime Ministership, Scott Morrison himself has engaged in the anti-trans culture wars on a number of occasions (tweeting against teacher support for trans kids – describing them as ‘gender whisperers’ – in September 2018; criticising a trans-inclusive Cricket Australia participation policy in April 2019; and personally intervening to remove gender identity-inclusive toilet door signs in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in August 2019).
However, from my perspective I would argue that the Coalition’s political campaign against trans and gender diverse Australians has really escalated in the past ten months.
In fact, I would pin-point that escalation to ten months ago yesterday (15 June 2021), when the Senate considered a motion from extremist One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts on the subject of ‘childhood gender dysphoria’, which effectively called for gender-affirming health care to be denied to trans and nonbinary children and young people.
Not only was Roberts’ motion not based on either the evidence of experts in the field, or the lived experience of trans people themselves, but if adopted as public policy would directly lead to serious health and mental health harms for gender diverse kids.[ii]
Despite this, the Morrison Liberal/National Government granted its Senators a conscience vote, and they supported this attack on trans health care by a margin of 21 to 6.
Coalition Senators voting to deprive trans kids of evidence-based support included Attorney-General Michaelia Cash, and Assistant Minister to the Attorney-General Amanda Stoker.
The only Coalition Senators who voted to support trans kids were Simon Birmingham, Andrew Bragg, Richard Colbeck, Jane Hume, Marise Payne and Dean Smith (thank you).
Thankfully, the motion was defeated overall (because Labor, the Greens and Jacquie Lambie opposed it), but from my perspective it marked a turning point in debate, with attacks by the Government only becoming more frequent in the months since.
For example, less than three months later in September last year the Government voted against straight-forward amendments to the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth), which simply would have ensured trans, nonbinary and intersex workers had exactly the same access to the Fair Work Commission as other employees.
There was absolutely no justification for their opposition. Not only because gender identity and intersex status were already included in the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth), but also because the then-Tony Abbott-led Liberal/National Opposition had actually supported the inclusion of those protected attributes back in 2013.
The Government’s position on trans (and intersex) rights had effectively gone backwards in the eight years since. It was, as I wrote at the time, both a pathetic position to take, and antipathetic to the rights of some of the most vulnerable members of the community.
Then of course there was the Religious Discrimination Bill, introduced to Parliament less than three months later again, in November of last year.
Overrode existing state and territory anti-discrimination laws to allow demeaning and derogatory comments against women, LGBT people, people with disability and even people of minority faiths, provided they were religiously-motivated
Overrode existing state and territory anti-discrimination laws that protect LGBT teachers in religious schools against discrimination (especially in Tasmania, the ACT and Queensland, and soon to commence laws in Victoria), and
Introduced religious exceptions which may have allowed discrimination against LGBT students in religious schools ‘under the guise of religious views’.
From this list it is clear trans people were one of many groups who stood to lose out under this legislation (so it wasn’t *only* a transphobic Bill).
But it is also undisputed that trans people were squarely in the sights of religious fundamentalists as they contemplated how they might (ab)use their new special privileges to discriminate had the laws passed (including Citipointe Christian College’s enrolment contract which primarily targeted trans kids, and Senate evidence of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria demanding the ability to misgender trans people in the workplace).
The Government then sought to mistreat trans people again when the Religious Discrimination Bill was considered by Parliament in February 2022, with Prime Minister Morrison introducing amendments that only protected lesbian, gay and bisexual students in religious schools against discrimination (and even then only against expulsion).
Even worse, after the Religious Discrimination Bill package was amended by the Opposition, cross-bench and five moderate Liberal MPs to protect trans and nonbinary kids, Morrison then chose not to have the Bill considered by the Senate at all (at least partially at the behest of the Australian Christian Lobby and Christian Schools Australia).
That is how much the Liberal/National Government opposes the rights of trans and nonbinary children: they were prepared to abandon another of their core promises entirely just because gender diverse students might have been protected as a by-product.
Then, on the very same day the Religious Discrimination Bill was placed on pause (to the relief of many, myself included), Tasmanian Liberal Senator Claire Chandler introduced a private members Bill to amend the Sex Discrimination Act in order to exclude trans women and girls from participating in women’s sport (a law which also would have had a significant detrimental impact on intersex women).
Within two weeks, the ‘Save Women’s Sports’ Bill had been personally endorsed by Prime Minister Morrison himself, while campaigning in Tasmania. Even though it is still not ‘official’ Government policy, this endorsement dramatically increases the risk this law will be passed should the Coalition win in May.
Finally, in the dying days of the Parliamentary term in early April, Liberal Senator Alex Antic misused Senate Estimates hearings by asking a range of witnesses how they would define ‘woman’, which is simply re-heated transphobic culture war nonsense copied directly from the Republican Party handbook in the United States.
A few things become clear when looking back on the events of the past ten months in this systematic way.
First, the Liberal/National Government’s war on the rights of trans Australians is relentless.
Second, their attacks only seem to be becoming more frequent.
Third, far from being an outlier, a candidate like Katherine Deves is likely to feel right at home inside the Coalition.
Indeed, her advocacy efforts, aiming to exclude trans women and girls from participating in women’s sport, seems to be the main reason why she was chosen in the first place.
On the first full day of the campaign (Monday 11 April) Morrison told 2GB radio that:
‘She’s [Deves is] standing up for things that she believes in, and I share her views on those topics. And, and I think it’s important that they’re raised and it’s got nothing to do with, you know, the broad agenda debates. This is just about, you know, common sense and what’s right. And I think Katherine’s right on the money there.’
Before telling another radio station later that day, during a discussion of trans inclusion in (or exclusion from) sport: ‘I welcome Katherine’s selection, pleased to play a role in that. I think she’s raised very important issues. I think Claire Chandler’s also been outspoken and brave on these issues. I share their views’ (emphasis added).
Katherine Deves was not chosen as a candidate in spite of her transphobic views. Deves was hand-picked as a candidate, by Scott Morrison, as a direct result of her anti-trans advocacy.
In fact, it seems to have been her primary ‘contribution’ to public life. The only other time I have come across her previously was listening to her as a witness at hearings into Mark Latham’s anti-trans kids Bill, in April 2021.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Deves (wearing her Save Women’s Sport Australasia hat) supported Latham’s Bill to erase trans students from classrooms and schoolyards across NSW – legislation which was so extreme that the NSW Perrottet *Liberal/National* Government ultimately rejected it because it ‘may lead to targeted discrimination against a marginalised community which already experiences poorer mental health and wellbeing outcomes’.
I started this post by highlighting some of the more appalling social media posts and other public comments for which Deves has been forced to apologise this week. But, rather than the (admittedly extreme) ways in which she expresses her position, it is the substance of those views – seeking to exclude trans women and girls from sport, supporting laws to erase trans kids and nonbinary students from classrooms – for which she should apologise.
But we already know that she won’t, because campaigning against trans rights is what Katherine Deves is known for.
I will now end this post by making three final points.
First, none of the above is news to trans and gender diverse Australians, who have been enduring this culture war for the past six or seven years, and are all-too-aware of its escalation over the past ten months. We already know it is having a devastating impact on their mental health and wellbeing, and will continue to do so for as long as it is allowed to go on.
Second, none of this will stop until the rest of us stand up and make it stop. Trans and gender diverse Australians have been fighting this battle on their own for far too long. It’s time for cis allies, including within the LGBTIQ community, but also in the Labor Opposition, Greens, moderate Liberals, and everyday members of the community, to tell the Morrison Liberal/National Coalition that enough is enough.
Trans women are women.
Trans men are men.
Trans rights are human rights.
And trans kids will be protected with all of our collective might.
Third, perhaps the most frustrating part of all is that spending significant time fighting back against attacks on trans rights means there’s less time to advocate for much-needed positive changes to improve the lives of trans Australians, because the project of trans equality is far from complete.
This obviously includes amending the Fair Work Act to explicitly protect trans and nonbinary (and intersex) workers.
And amending the Sex Discrimination Act to remove the ability of religious schools to lawfully discriminate against LGBT students, and teachers and other staff members.
It also includes removing the high out-of-pocket costs for gender-affirming health care which places transition financially out of reach for too many trans Australians (and leaves others under severe financial stress).
And plenty more besides.
These are the things we need to happen. Not another ten months of unrelenting attacks on the trans community. And not the election of candidates like Katherine Deves, or other people with views like hers.
For LGBTI people, if this post has raised issues for you, please contact QLife on 1800 184 527, or via webchat: https://qlife.org.au/ or contact Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14.
NB This post is written in a personal capacity, and does not reflect the views of employers past or present.
Katherine Deves
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Footnotes:
[i] Full quote: ‘I’ve always loved 20th-century history and I think many people would say to themselves, ‘I’d never been to villages that stayed quiet, while the trains went past or whatever, I would have been part of the French Resistance, the underground, you know, I would be one of those people.’ And when all of this was happening, and no one was speaking out, I thought, this is it. This is the moment in my life, when I’m going to have to stand up and say something against the status quo and against the establishment and say, ‘I don’t think this is right’.’
(i) in 100 years of diagnostic history of childhood gender dysphoria (GD) there is an alarming trend that teenage girls, with no history of GD, have become the largest group seeking treatment,
(ii) in the United States of America, girsl requesting gender reassignment surgery in 2016-17 rose 400%,
(iii) in the United Kingdom, girls presenting with GD in the last 10 years rose 4000%, and
(iv) Australia’s Royal Children’s Hospital indicates referrals have grown from 1 every two years to 104 patients in 2014;
(b) further notes that:
(i) Sweden’s leading gender clinic has ended treatment of minors with hormonal drugs due to safety concerns, citing cancer and infertility, and
(ii) suicide mortality rate for transgendered people is 20 times higher than comparable peers;
(c) supports children presenting with GD to be given:
(i) the ‘wait and see’ method as the first choice, since evidence shows between 70-90% of young people’s dysphoria resolves itself by puberty, and
(ii) a comprehensive therapeutic pathway, since a large percentage of these children have pre-existing mental health issues, and not a medical pathway; and
(d) condemns the practice of children receiving:
(i) experimental and unproven medical treatments of irreversible puberty blockers and sex hormone treatments, and
Please reject the Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) 2020
I am writing to urge you to reject the One Nation Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020 – otherwise known as Mark Latham’s anti-trans kids Bill.
All students in NSW deserve the opportunity learn and grow in a safe and welcoming school environment. That must include lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) students.
The Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020 fails this fundamental principle. It fails LGBTIQ students generally, and trans and nonbinary students in particular, by making them feel invisible, and denying them the same support as other students.
This includes erasing trans and nonbinary students in classrooms and schoolyards across the state via the ban on any discussion of ‘gender fluidity’, which would prevent teachers, principals and counsellors from even acknowledging that trans and gender diverse people exist, and leave students who are already vulnerable feeling even more isolated and alone.
It includes a broader ban on positive references to diversity in sexual orientation and gender identity. This provision – modelled on the notorious ‘section 28’ which harmed a generation of LGBTQ students in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s – would have a chilling effect on all school staff, and would even stop school counsellors from being able to reassure a student struggling with their sexual orientation, by telling them who they are is perfectly normal.
And it includes the insertion of a new offensive and stigmatising definition of people born with intersex variations of sex characteristics in NSW law.
Unfortunately, this is legislation that would harm LGBTIQ children and young people rather than help them. It must be rejected.
I also call on you to reject the recommendations of the Parliamentary Inquiry into the Education Legislation Amendment Bill, through your Government’s response which is due by 7 March 2022.
That Inquiry was flawed from the very beginning, with One Nation Leader Mark Latham chairing the examination of his own legislation.
Nor did it hear from the communities who would be most at risk under the Bill: only one witness out of more than 40 who gave evidence was transgender, and none were current trans or nonbinary students.
Unsurprisingly, given this bias, the Committee’s recommendations would make the problems caused by the Bill worse, rather than better, including Recommendation 8 that would (among other things):
Ban trans students from using the bathroom that reflects their gender identity
Out trans students to non-supportive parents, even where this puts them in danger
Stop trans students from seeking confidential help from school counsellors, and
Out trans students to all of the parents of students in their year group.
These recommendations would only compound the harms caused by what was a deeply damaging and divisive Bill to begin with.
The Bill, and Inquiry recommendations, are in direct conflict with the message of unity which you emphasised when you first became Premier on 5 October 2021. You said:
‘Being Premier is a great honour, but I want to be clear that the job I have committed to today is not just to lead NSW, but to serve all the people of our state’ (emphasis added).[i]
Abandoning LGBTIQ children and young people, and especially trans and nonbinary students, would clearly not be serving all the people of NSW.
In those same comments that day, you also said:
‘The true strength of NSW is its people, our working mums and dads, business owners, frontline workers, teachers, workers, doctors, paramedics, firefighters, police, tradies’ (emphasis added).
If you genuinely support teachers, then you will oppose legislation that would place them in the most impossible of circumstances: having to choose between supporting the LGBTIQ students in their classes, or keeping their job.
This is because the Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020 would lead to teachers who acknowledge trans and gender diverse people exist, or make positive references to diversity in sexual orientation and gender identity, having their registration cancelled and therefore being fired.
Any human would choose to support the real-life person in front of them, and to meet their real-life needs, rather than implement discriminatory legislation that is not motivated by the best interests of those students.
As a human, and as Premier, you have the opportunity to reject this legislation, and to remove the threat to teachers for simply doing what teachers do: teach the child in front of them, including making sure they have an inclusive environment in which to learn and grow.
I therefore reiterate my call to you to publicly, and unequivocally, reject the One Nation Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020, and the recommendations of Mark Latham’s Committee which inquired into his own legislation.
In doing so, you would be living up to your words on the day you became Premier, and the message of unity you delivered to the state.
Above all, you would be sending a clear message to LGBTIQ children and young people generally, and to trans and nonbinary students in particular, that who they are is valued, and that they have a place in NSW.
Thank you in advance for considering this correspondence. Please do not hesitate to contact me at the details provided should you require additional information.
Sincerely
Alastair Lawrie
Footnotes:
[i] ‘Dominic Perrottet’s first full speech as leader’, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 October 2021, available here.
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Last week, we had some rare good news: the Commonwealth Government’s Religious Discrimination Bill stalled in the Senate, and now seems unlikely to pass before the upcoming federal election.
That Bill would have legally protected religiously-motivated anti-LGBT speech in all areas of public life, and potentially overridden state and territory protections for LGBT teachers and other workers in religious schools in Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania and the ACT (among many other problems – for more detail, see: Why the Religious Discrimination Bill must be rejected (In 1,000 words or less)).
The fact it has been stopped (at least for now), is obviously a welcome relief.
Unfortunately, that relief is short-lived, especially for LGBTIQ people in NSW, because the NSW Government’s response to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Mark Latham’s Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020 – otherwise known as his anti-trans kids Bill – is expected at any point in the next three weeks, and must be delivered by March 7 (the Monday after Mardi Gras).
This legislation is actually worse than the Religious Discrimination Bill, in particular because it so specifically targets the most vulnerable members of our community. For those who aren’t familiar with it, allow me to explain its main features.
What’s in Mark Latham’s anti-trans kids Bill?
The primary purpose of Latham’s legislation is to erase trans and gender diverse children from classrooms and schoolyards across NSW. It does this by inserting the following definition into the Education Act 1990 (NSW):
gender fluidity means a belief there is a difference between biological sex (including people who are, by their chromosomes, male or female but are born with disorders of sexual differentiation) and human gender and that human gender is socially constructed rather [than] being equivalent to a person’s biological sex.
It then prohibits not just ‘the teaching of gender fluidity’ (proposed section 17A), but also any ‘instruction, counselling and advice provided by’ teachers, support staff, counsellors, principals, contractors, consultants and even volunteers at any school in the state, public or private (proposed section 17C).
The punishment for teachers who breach this prohibition is immediate de-registration (ie being fired).
In effect, the Bill would impose an official silence on anything to do with transgender people – even the fact that they exist. This includes everything from exclusion from the health and physical education syllabus, through to banning school counsellors from discussing gender identity with struggling students who are at risk of self-harm or suicide.
Trans and gender diverse kids would be made to feel invisible, with nowhere to turn to for help.
The Bill then *also* includes provisions to harm LGBTQ kids more generally. It does this by inserting a definition of matters of parental primacy:
in relation to the education of children, moral and ethical standards, political and social values, and matters of personal wellbeing and identity including gender and sexuality.
Before introducing a range of provisions to limit the teaching of anything to do with these issues. Chief among them is proposed section 17B:
Teaching to be non-ideological
In government schools, the education is to consist of strictly non-ideological instructions in matters of parental primacy. The words non-ideological instruction are to be taken to include general teaching about matters of parental primacy as distinct from advocating or promoting dogmatic or polemical ideology.
The impact of this provision is incredibly far-reaching. After all, if some parents believe homosexuality is sinful, then presumably it would be ideological for a school to teach that simply being lesbian, gay or bisexual is okay. As with the ban on the teaching of gender fluidity, this ban also applies in relation to school counsellors (who could not reassure a child struggling with their sexual orientation that who they are is normal).
The use of the phrase ‘advocating or promoting’ reveals this is simply Margaret Thatcher’s infamous section 28 – which harmed a generation of LGBT kids in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s – recycled on the other side of the world for the 2020s.
The outcome would be the same here – teachers and other workers too afraid to mention anything to do with sexual orientation or gender identity at the risk of de-registration, inflicting silence on LGBTQ kids where there should be support.
Finally, Latham’s Bill attacks the ‘I’ part of the LGBTIQ community by including an offensive and stigmatising reference to intersex in NSW law (as part of the definition of gender fluidity – ‘people who are, by their chromosomes, male or female but are born with disorders of sexual differentiation). The use of disorders here is exactly the type of harmful language which encourages the imposition of coercive surgeries and other unnecessary medical treatments on children born with variations of sex characteristics.
But it’s from Mark Latham. Why can’t we just ignore it?
For those (blissfully) unaware of Mark Latham’s current political status, the failed former federal leader of the Australian Labor Party is now the NSW leader of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party. In a normal political environment, fringe extremist legislation from a fringe extremist party could sometimes be ignored.
Sadly, the NSW Legislative Council removed this option when, in its infinite (lack of) wisdom, it decided to refer the Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020 to the Education Portfolio Committee for inquiry – the same Committee chaired by… Mark Latham.
Given this, the inquiry process into Latham’s unbalanced and transphobic Bill was, well, unbalanced and transphobic.
In the two days of hearings last April, 42 witnesses were invited to give evidence. Only one (Teddy Cook, from ACON) was trans or gender diverse. None were trans or gender diverse students, the people whose right to a safe learning environment would be stripped away by passage of this law.
There were multiple instances of disrespectful treatment towards submitters who opposed the Bill (from Latham himself), while he encouraged other witnesses to give evidence about subject matter which was not included in the legislation (such as witnesses who focused on the exclusion of trans girls from bathrooms, and sporting activities).
Unsurprisingly, the entire committee process became a platform for some of the worst examples of transphobia we have seen in any Australian parliament in recent history, perhaps best summed up by this statement from Mark Sneddon of the Institute of Civil Society:
‘What we are trying to do – or what I understand the bill is trying to do – is to reduce the social contagion influence putting more people onto the conveyor belt of gender transition.’
Which, at the very least, is being honest: through this Bill, Latham is attempting to stop trans and nonbinary kids from being trans and nonbinary. Presumably because he thinks being those things is a negative in and of itself.
While the rest of us understand that:
Trans and nonbinary people are part of the natural spectrum of human gender identity
Trans and nonbinary kids are awesome, and
There are really two conveyor belts – one which lets trans and nonbinary kids be themselves and delivers them to health and happiness, and one which tells trans and nonbinary kids that they are wrong and should not exist, and causes them serious harm.
Completely unsurprisingly, given the Committee’s lack of impartiality, the Final Report released in September 2021 endorsed core parts of Latham’s anti-trans kids Bill.
This includes Recommendation 2, which supported the section 28-style approach to denying information to lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans students:
That, in recognition of its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the NSW Government supports all parental primacy provisions and protections in the Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights Bill) 2020 including:
the statutory recognition of parental primacy in definition, object and principle within the Education Act 1990 and related statutes;
the requirement for teaching to be non-ideological;
the enhanced consultation requirements with parents; and
the right for parents to withdraw their children from teaching that is inconsistent with their core values and convictions.
And while there was a brief glimmer of hope when I first read Recommendation 7 (‘That the Legislative Council amend the Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020 to remove the proposed legislative provisions concerning gender fluidity’), this was immediately undone by Recommendation 8, which starts:
‘That the NSW Government update Bulletin 55: Transgender Students in Schools based on the following principles:
The Safe Schools program and Gayby Baby movie are prohibited in NSW Government schools. Gender fluidity is not part of the NSW school curriculum and therefore, should not be taught or promoted, either in classrooms, teacher professional development, by external consultants, special school activities or through the distribution of material to teachers or students. This prohibition also applies to the teaching of gender as a ‘social construct’.’
In practice, the Committee still endorsed the erasure of trans and gender diverse kids from classrooms and schoolyards, they simply thought it could best be achieved via Bulletin, not Bill.
But there are other parts of Recommendation 8 which are *far* worse, and would not be out of place in regressive and repressive, redneck Republican USA. This includes (but is definitely not limited to):
A ban on trans students using the bathroom that reflects their gender identity (Recommendation 8.9: ‘Other than in circumstances of a full medical gender transition,[i] students born biologically male shall not be allowed in female toilets, change rooms, dormitories and excursion accommodation; and vice versa for students born biologically female. Third options shall be made available for these students, such as administrative block toilets and change rooms’)
Outing trans students to non-supportive parents, even where this puts the student in danger (Recommendation 8.4: ‘No school or school staff can withhold information from parents about the gender or gender transition of a student at the school, other than by court order or acting with the advice of a government child protection agency’ and Recommendation 8.5: ‘No student has the right or capacity to stop the school telling their parents information about their gender, where the school is obliged to do so’)
Stopping trans students from seeking confidential help from school counsellors (Recommendation 8.11: ‘For students aged under 18 years, school counsellors should not involve themselves in questions of gender fluidity and transition without prior reference to parents and any medical professionals advising the student and parents on this matter. Parents have the right to know if gender fluidity and transition are being discussed at a school. School counsellors must liaise with parents and relevant medical professionals as much as possible’), and
Outing trans students to all of the parents of students in their year group (Recommendation 8.12: ‘If a student has changed their gender, their parents shall be consulted about the best way of communicating this to the school community. Parents of other children in the same year group should be notified of the change, allowing them to talk to their children in advance’).
The full Committee report, and other harmful parts of Recommendation 8, can be read here.
In short, the adoption of Recommendation 8 in full would cause significant harm for thousands of trans and nonbinary children and young people in NSW.
Which makes it disturbing to realise that not only was this recommendation (and all of the others, including implementing section 28) made by Committee Chair Mark Latham, they were endorsed by all three Coalition members of the Committee, as well as one of the two Labor Opposition members.
Only Labor MLC Anthony D’Adam and Greens MLC David Shoebridge stood up for trans and gender diverse kids against this harmful and hateful Bill.
So, what happens next?
What happens next comes down to the NSW Government, and in particular to new(ish) Premier Dominic Perrottet.
As I indicated in the introduction, they must respond to the Final Report of Mark Latham’s Committee’s Inquiry into Mark Latham’s anti-trans kids Bill by 7 March 2022 at the latest.
The simplest approach would be for Perrottet to reject both the Committee Report, and the Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020, outright, and to instead stand up for the rights of all students – including all lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and nonbinary, intersex and queer students – to a safe learning environment.
But that outcome is by no means guaranteed. There are obviously some members within the Government who support Latham’s agenda attacking trans and gender diverse kids (starting with the three MLCs on his Committee).
It is therefore entirely possible that Premier Perrottet, and the NSW Government, endorse some parts, or even all, of Mark Latham’s Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020 before Monday March 7.
We could also see them introduce their own legislation on this subject, similar to and possibly inspired by the Latham Bill, in the following weeks or months.
If that happens, then it will take a collective effort just as strong, and just as broad-based, as the campaign against the Religious Discrimination Bill to ensure it is defeated.
We will need to fight like lives depend on it. Because they will. The lives of some of the most vulnerable members of our community: trans and nonbinary kids.
*****
For LGBTIQ+ people, if this post has raised issues for you, please contact QLife on 1800 184 527, or via webchat: https://qlife.org.au/ (between 3pm and midnight, every day)
Or contact Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14.
All eyes will be on Education Minister Sarah Mitchell (front), and Premier Dominic Perrottet (back), in coming weeks as they announce the NSW Government’s response to Mark Latham’s Committee’s Inquiry into Mark Latham’s anti-trans kids Bill.
If you have enjoyed reading this post, you can sign up to receive updates about this and other issues from this blog, via the right-hand scroll bar on desktop, or near the bottom of the page on mobile. You can also follow me on twitter @alawriedejesus
Footnotes:
[i] Noting that, for the vast majority of trans and gender diverse young people, they do not access what is referred to here as ‘full medical gender transition’ until they are 18.
The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee has been conducting an inquiry into the Religious Discrimination Bill 2021 over summer.
As part of that inquiry, it held two days of public hearings, on Thursday 20 and Friday 21 January, with a range of witnesses from religious organisations, civil society, business, legal groups, the Australian Human Rights Commission and Attorney-General’s Department.
Here are five things we learned from those hearings, ahead of the Committee’s final report, which is due to be tabled this afternoon (Friday 4 February), prior to debate on the Bill resuming in the House of Representatives next Tuesday (8 February).
Citipointe’s conduct is not an outlier – in fact, it’s exactly the point
By now, most people will be familiar with the situation at Citipointe Christian College in Brisbane, which this time last week, issued a new enrolment contract seeking to discriminate against LGBT students generally, and trans and gender diverse students in particular.
What is also important to note is the way in which they sought to justify this discrimination. Clause 26 of their contract in particular tries to dress it up as discrimination on the basis of religious belief about gender identity, rather than on the basis of gender identity itself:
‘The Parents acknowledge and accept that, should I/we not share the College’s commitment to fostering these fundamental doctrinal precepts, this will constitute a serious departure from the religious precepts upon which Citipointe Christian College is based and will afford Citipointe Christian College the right to exclude a student from the College who no longer adheres to the College’s doctrinal precepts including those as to biological sex, which constitute an important tenet of the College’s Christian religion (emphasis added).’
Now, it is highly likely that Citipointe’s actions would be unlawful under the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Act 1991, not just because that legislation does not allow religious schools to discriminate against students on the basis of gender identity, at all, but also because neither does it allow them to discriminate against students on the basis of religious belief beyond the point of initial enrolment.
Therefore, even if the school was successful in arguing this was indeed discrimination on the ground of religious belief about gender identity, it still couldn’t lawfully discriminate against existing trans and gender diverse kids.
Unfortunately, the same safeguard does not exist in the Religious Discrimination Bill, which allows religious schools to discriminate against students on the basis of religious belief not just at the point of enrolment, but throughout their education.
And this right will exist, even if Liberal moderates are successful in amending the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) to remove specific exceptions allowing religious schools to discriminate under that law.
Which means, if the Religious Discrimination Bill is passed in its current form, religious schools will continue to discriminate against LGBT students, ‘under the guise of religious views’, rather than sexual orientation and gender identity.
But the outcome will still be the same: LGBT kids mistreated because of who they are.
Above all, the attempted actions by Citipointe on this issue are not an outlier – in fact, multiple religious organisations at the Senate hearings told us this is what they would do.
For example, there was this exchange involving Mr Mark Spencer, Director of Public Policy, Christian Schools Australia:
Senator Andrew Bragg (Liberal): Finally – I’m just conscious of time – on the issue of children in schools, I understand that there was some discussion earlier about the different clauses that may or may not be considered by this parliament. My question is really more on the principle here, which is: do you want to have a right in the law to expel gay kids?
Mr Spencer: Again, you’re making a sweeping statement there that needs a bit more nuance. For a start, you talk about gay kids. Are you talking about same-sex attracted kids who might be committed to living a biblical authentic life? Are you talking about young people who may be, by their behaviour, not meeting the conduct standards of the school? There are a whole range of difference scenarios in there that you need to be unpacking and considering. The short answer is: no, no child has been, and no child do we want to sack simply because they might be same-sex attracted.
Senator Bragg: So your answer is no?
Mr Spencer: The answer is: no child do we want to expel simply because they’re same-sex attracted (emphasis added).
Translation: Christian Schools Australia reserve the right to discriminate against, and even expel, any gay student who is not ‘committed to living a biblical authentic life’. Which means affirming statements like ‘homosexuality is intrinsically disordered’, and pledging to be celibate for life.
In other words (or my words in fact): If a gay kid hates themself enough, they can stay. But if they do not believe who they are is inherently wrong, they can be lawfully mistreated.
Or this exchange with Right Reverend Dr Micheal Stead, Bishop of South Sydney, Anglican Church Diocese of Sydney:
Senator Bragg: I guess the question is: should you be allowed to discriminate against someone based on their sexual preference if they are teaching in accordance with the ethos of the school?
Bishop Stead: No – sorry, I may have misunderstood your question. None of the religious bodies are arguing for the right to discriminate on the basis of sexuality or gender. What we’re arguing for is the right to be able to discriminate on the basis of religious belief. If it happens that somebody’s religious belief also reflects their sexuality or their gender in a way which is inconsistent with the belief of the organisation-
…
Bishop Stead: Yes. The religious institutions are not seeking the right to discriminate on the basis of sexuality, gender or any of the other protected attributes-
Senator Deb O’Neill (ALP): Race, disability, age-
Bishop Stead: Thank you. They’re looking for the right to, in the wrong language, ‘discriminate on the basis of religion’. We would say ‘to preference on the basis of religion’ – to act in accordance with their religious belief. It’s only at the point at which somebody’s religious belief has changed to reflect their sexuality or gender that makes it inconsistent with the school that we’re into this area of intersectionality (emphasis added).
Again, they might say it’s discrimination on the basis of religious belief (or ‘preferencing’, to use their term), but it’s clear that in practice LGBT students and teachers will be the victims.
Or this exchange with Mrs Moira Deeming, Researcher, Church and Nation Committee, Presbyterian Church of Victoria:
Mrs Deeming: There are gay Christians and teachers – I am a teacher – who are Christians first and the way that they deal with whatever their sexuality feels like is expressed in a Christian manner. It’s about religious freedom and it’s about religious association. It’s not about finding out if someone is gay and cutting them out. It’s about working out: are you like minded with us? If you are like minded, join with us. Then there shouldn’t be an issue.
Senator Bragg: That wasn’t my question, but I know I am out of time. On notice, can you come back with exactly what your position is because, frankly, it’s a bit murky.
Mrs Deeming: Would you mind restating your question clearly just one more time?
Senator Bragg: The question is: do you want to be able to discriminate based on sexual orientation or preference in the hiring of your staff?
Mrs Deeming: That’s a corollary to preferencing based on religious belief. We’re not targeting anybody- (emphasis added)
All three witnesses appear to be saying: we reserve the right to discriminate against LGBT people, we’ll just call it discrimination on the basis of religious belief.
Which is exactly what Citipointe Christian College was trying to do with its contract. Fortunately, that was unlawful because of the much stronger anti-discrimination laws in Queensland.
But, discrimination protections for students and teachers under the Religious Discrimination Bill are much, much weaker, because of the excessive and extreme exceptions provided to religious organisations under this legislation, allowing them to lawfully discriminate.
As a result, there will be plenty more Citipointes around the country in future. And that’s not ‘murky’, it’s perfectly clear.
2. Workers from minority faiths are left unprotected by the Bill
The excessive and extreme religious exceptions contained in the Religious Discrimination Bill 2021 don’t just affect LGBT people.
In fact, one of the groups who stand to lose the most are workers from minority faiths. This is because large, usually-Christian, publicly-funded service delivery organisations – including hospitals, aged care facilities, accommodation providers and disability service providers – will be able to lawfully discriminate on the basis of religious belief in employment.
That means hiring (and firing), and providing (or denying) training, promotion, and other benefits, on the basis of faith rather than ability. Workers who are Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, agnostic and atheist can be treated less favourably than Christians, just because of who they are.
But don’t take my word for it. Here’s Mr Surinder Jain, National Vice President of the Hindu Council of Australia, explaining the Bill’s impact on his community:
‘We have a lot of Hindus who work in aged-care services and disability services, predominantly being run by religious organisations. We have doctors working in private hospitals. We have IT people. Their jobs would be questionable. There is another category of people who are new migrants, who come here and who are desperately looking for a job and they find a job in a religious organisation. There is unsaid pressure on them that they should adapt to the religion of the organisation that they are in. This way the religious freedom [Bill] would actually be taking away their freedom of ideology and religion in declaring their faith and practising their faith and in not being pressured into adopting another faith.’
In short, the Religious Discrimination Bill privileges larger faiths at the expense of smaller ones, and especially employees of the latter.
3.A ‘mask off’ moment revealed what the statement of belief provision is really about
Through much of the hearings, and especially during the appearance by the Attorney-General’s Department on the Friday afternoon, defenders of the Bill attempted to downplay the impact of the unprecedented statement of belief override of all other Commonwealth, state and territory anti-discrimination laws that protects religiously-motivated comments that offend, humiliate, insult and ridicule others.
They tried to make it seem like it was all very reasonable, rather than an extraordinary legal privilege to allow people to make demeaning and derogatory comments about women, LGBT people, people with disability and people of minority faiths in all areas of public life.
Well, not all of them – one witness on the Thursday afternoon let the ‘reasonable’ mask slip, confirming the statement of belief provision will provide a platform for transphobia: Mrs Moira Deeming, Researcher, Church and Nation Committee of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria.
I’ll reproduce the relevant part of the transcript below, but for context, remember that Greens Senator Janet Rice’s late wife was a trans woman:
Senator Janet Rice (Greens): We’re talking about, particularly, clauses 11 and 12 of this bill and, particularly, the statements of belief. The Australian Human Rights Commission say that statements of belief that will be legal under this legislation, which will override state and territory legislation, are currently considered discrimination, and they will no longer be considered discrimination.
Mrs Deeming: Multipartisan support – let’s get a controversial statement. ‘Trans women are men’. Would you consider that, in and of itself, a discriminatory statement that should never be uttered?
Senator Rice: If that were being stated in a workplace to a trans woman, absolutely.
Senator Rice: Do you believe that’s not discrimination?
Mrs Deeming: I just think it’s a statement of belief, and I don’t think it’s necessarily a religious belief.
Senator Rice: And, if it’s offensive to that trans woman, you that it’s acceptable?
Mrs Deeming: I think-
Senator Rice: It’s deeply offensive and potentially causing that trans woman to have severe mental health illness… to not be accepted in their gender identity.
Chair: Senator Rice, I’m just going to ask you to pause here.
Senator Louise Pratt (ALP): But, in the same workplace, someone won’t have the right to call the person who said that a bigot.
Chair: Senator Pratt, I’m just going to ask you to pause as well. Senator Rice has put a question to Mrs Deeming. Mrs Deeming, please answer the question. I don’t want any witness being interrupted, please.
Mrs Deeming: I pose that question because it’s obviously the most controversial one at the moment. It’s not specifically a religious view that biological sex cannot be altered. It’s not. There are many, many people – lesbians, in fact, and homosexual men and people from across the political spectrum, people in every single party here – that would agree with the statement that trans women are, by definition, male. They wouldn’t be making it on the basis of hate. What I’m interested her is finding out whether you’re going to try and take statements like that and class them as inherently harmful, where no offence was intended. It’s just a difference of belief. It’s a belief we don’t subscribe to.
Senator Rice: A difference of belief?… In that sort of instance, in a workplace, if that statement has been given to a young person who is attempting to affirm their gender, it leads to severe mental unwellness and severe impact on them – not being able to affirm their gender. It leads to suicidal ideation. It leads to potential suicide. That is the reality for trans and gender diverse people. So I put it to you that that is, in and of itself, a discriminatory and hateful statement if it is being made to those people.
Mrs Deeming: And I put it to you that it is psychologically abusive to coerce students and other people to say things that they do not believe, especially about the nature of biological-
*****
There’s a lot to take in there obviously, but some things stand out:
Deeming pro-actively chose to raise the statement ‘trans women are men’ – during an exchange with a Senator whose late wife was a trans woman
She argued that it’s ‘just a statement of belief’, and therefore should be legally protected
She did not agree with Rice’s comments about the harm caused by such statements to trans and gender diverse people
Instead, Deeming claimed it is ‘psychologically abusive’ to require students and other people to effectively treat trans and gender diverse people with respect.
In this exchange, Deeming confirmed that the statement of belief provision is not about providing protection for people who simply state ‘marriage is between a man and a woman’ – it is instead really about allowing people to make deeply transphobic comments to others, even to fellow employees in the workplace who are simply trying to do their job.
4. ‘The limit does not exist’ to the religious freedom agenda
There was another development over the course of the hearings which reveals a helluva lot about the ever-growing demands of the ‘religious freedom’ movement – and how it will continue to strip away the rights of others, with little care for the consequences it creates.
This relates to proposals to redraft clause 12 of the Bill – which is the ‘statement of belief’ provision – ostensibly to ensure it is constitutional. These changes were put forward by Professor Nicholas Aroney, who had previously served as a member of the Ruddock Religious Freedom Review (which helped to create the mess we are now in).
Anyway, from Mr Aroney’s submission to the Committee:
‘To maintain this policy objective while addressing any doubts about the effectiveness of clause 12 under section 109 of the Constitution it would be sufficient to amend the clause so that it reads:
(1) A statement of belief, in and of itself, does not constitute discrimination for the purposes of this Act.
(2) Notwithstanding any of the following State of Territory laws, it is not unlawful to make a statement of belief, in and of itself:’
The redrafted amendment then lists all four of the Commonwealth anti-discrimination Acts (Racial, Sex, Disability and Age), and each of the primary state and territory anti-discrimination laws (such as the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act 1977).
Now, I am not a constitutional lawyer, so I can’t tell you whether it has made the provision more, or less, constitutional.
However, I am an expert on the Religious Discrimination Bill and I can tell you that with this drafting Mr Aroney has made sure the ‘statement of belief’ clause would explicitly override section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth).
As well as all state and territory anti-vilification provisions found in their primary Acts (like the prohibitions on racial, homosexual, transgender and HIV/AIDS vilification in the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act 1977).
This is because his version of clause 12 overrides all parts of these laws (by using the general phrase ‘it is not unlawful’), whereas even the current version of the Religious Discrimination Bill applies to discrimination only (it uses the phrase ‘does not constitute discrimination’ instead).
I can’t speak for Mr Aroney, so I don’t know whether this drafting is deliberate – and he meant to ensure religiously-motivated comments that breach laws like s18C should be protected – or whether it is simply careless.
But even if it was the latter, I think it is symptomatic of the overall ‘religious freedom’ agenda – and that is it is only ever concerned with securing more, and more, and more, rights for religious fundamentalists, like the right to be a bigot towards women, LGBT people, people with disability and people of minority faiths.
And rarely, if ever, do religious freedom advocates bother to step back to consider what is being stripped away from other groups in society. Such as, in this instance, racial minorities.
My view is reinforced by the fact, on Thursday 20 January, multiple witnesses, from a variety of different religious organisations, were asked whether they supported Mr Aroney’s changes. Those that offered their support for his drafting include:
Mr John Steenhof, Principal Lawyer, Human Rights Law Alliance
Mr Mark Sneddon, Executive Director, Institute for Civil Society
Professor Patrick Parkinson, Director, Freedom for Faith
Right Reverend Dr Michael Stead, Bishop of South Sydney, Anglican Church Diocese of Sydney
Reverend Christopher Duke, Convener, Church and Nation Committee, Presbyterian Church of Victoria
Pastor Michael Worker, General Secretary and Director, Public Affairs and Religious Liberty, Seventh-day Adventist Church in Australia, and
Pastor Mark Llewellyn Edwards, Australian Christian Churches.
Again, I have no idea if they each consciously support overriding s18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), and other state and territory anti-vilification laws. But they absolutely supported amendments that have this practical effect. And at the very least it seems nobody even stopped to think about who was going to lose out as a result.
That is the insatiable religious freedom agenda in action. And you had best believe that, even if the Religious Discrimination Bill is passed, it will not stop eating away at the rights of others to live their lives free from discrimination.
5. Government Senators still haven’t grasped the full dangers of the Religious Discrimination Bill
It is fair to describe the Religious Discrimination Bills as complex, particularly because it contains a number of unique provisions that do things no other Australian anti-discrimination law has ever done before (like clauses 11 and 12, which specifically override, and undermine, anti-discrimination protections in other jurisdictions).
Nevertheless, it was disheartening when, on the final afternoon of two Senate hearings – which followed another three days of hearings into the Bill by the Joint Committee on Human Rights – the Chair of the Committee (Senator Sarah Henderson), was involved in the following exchanges, demonstrating she still hadn’t fully understood one of the Bill’s main problems:
Chair: Do you have to believe that it’s part of the doctrines and tenets of that religion? There has got to be a factual basis for that. You can’t just subjectively believe that.
Mr Walter [from the Attorney-General’s Department]: It’s a test of whether the individual believes it or not…
…
Chair: Does it have to be genuinely held in relation to you’ve got to factually be able to demonstrate that what you hold as your genuine belief reflect the doctrines and tenets of that religion? Your so-called relationship with God can’t be separated from, or not connected with, the doctrines and tenets of that religion. In other words, you can’t just make something up.
Senator Rice: You can. If you genuinely believe that your religion says so, you can.
Chair: That’s what I’m seeking to clarify. There’s been a genuine concern that many have expressed during these two days of hearings.
Mr Walter: Yes. What it doesn’t do is it doesn’t apply an objective text of saying, for example, ‘I believe X’…
…
Chair: Just to give you an example, could someone who is pro-euthanasia and has made some comments in relation to that issue genuinely consider that such a position is in accordance with the doctrines and tenets of Catholicism, for instance? The concern is that when you start to rely on the individual’s-
Senator Rice: It’s how it’s drafted.
Chair: genuine belief, which might not be connected in any way with the doctrine or tenet of that particular religion, isn’t there an issue with an objective test not applying?
Mr Walter: In that particular example, in theory, yes. However, that person needs to establish that they genuinely believe that. You’re going to be looking for a pattern of evidence that they’ve held that belief for a long time or they’ve expressed it in many ways-
Chair: Surely that doesn’t make sense, because that’s not consistent with the Catholic doctrine. How can they genuinely believe that that’s part of a tenet of that faith when it clearly, on its face, does not accord with the doctrines or tenets of Catholicism? How could that-
Senator O’Neill (ALP): That’s before we get to the religions that are new and don’t have such a body of evidence.
Senator Rice: Exactly.
Chair: That’s what makes this very complicated. Is there not a difficulty because there’s not an objective text; it’s a subjective test?
*****
At the very end, Senator Henderson was finally at least starting to ask the right question – because yes, there is a massive difficulty in that the definition of statement of belief is entirely subjective (with clause 5 of the Bill stating that only the person making the statement needs to ‘genuinely consider’ it to be in accordance with the religion).
That’s why this provision will protect an almost unlimited array of fringe beliefs – including white supremacist speech, as long as the person making it ‘genuinely considers’ it relates to their particularly-warped views of Christianity. It would not matter if every single church in Australia disagreed with them.
And the Attorney-General’s Department’s response – You’re going to be looking for a pattern of evidence that they’ve held that belief for a long time or they’ve expressed it in many ways – only makes things worse.
Apparently, if you can show you’ve made white supremacist comments, dressed up as religious belief, many times before, then it makes it more likely your comments will be protected from discrimination claims under Commonwealth, state and territory law.
The statement of belief provision is a mess. The whole Religious Discrimination Bill is a mess. And it must be rejected.
Conclusion
The above are just five of the issues which arose during the two days of hearings by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee into the Religious Discrimination Bill. There were many more I could have chosen to highlight here.
Despite this, based on media reports this morning, it seems likely that both Liberal and Labor Senators will recommend that the legislation be passed.
Which gives us just a matter of days to help stop this extreme, radical and unprecedented assault on the human rights of everyday Australians.
The Religious Discrimination Bill might have been introduced by PM Scott Morrison, but it is just as big a test for Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese: will he support legislation that takes away rights from women, LGBT people, people with disability and people from minority faiths?
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[NB This article is written in a personal capacity and does not represent the views of employers, past or present.]
In August 2020, NSW One Nation MLC Mark Latham introduced the Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020. As I wrote at the time, this Bill is the worst legislative attack on LGBTI rights in Australia this century.
In particular, Latham’s Bill seeks to erase trans and gender diverse students from classrooms and schoolyards across NSW. It would also establish a UK ‘section 28’-style prohibition on positive references to anything at all to do with LGBT people, as well as introducing an offensive and stigmatising definition of intersex variations of sex characteristics.
This Bill should have been immediately rejected by the Berejiklian Liberal/National Government and (at the time McKay) Labor Opposition. Instead, Coalition and Labor Members of the Legislative Council voted to refer the Bill for inquiry by the Portfolio Committee No. 3 – Education, which just so happens to be chaired by Mark Latham himself, thus creating a serious and ongoing conflict of interest.
Even if there might be circumstances in which an MLC should be given authority to lead an inquiry into their own legislation (and, readers, I can’t think of any right now), a chair in this situation should be acutely aware of the responsibilities of their position and their obligation to act impartially and respectfully.
Unfortunately, as demonstrated in the 11 months since then, Mark Latham is not such a chair. Indeed, Mark Latham’s Inquiry into Mark Latham’s anti-trans kids Bill has been as unbalanced and transphobic as his legislation is, as evidenced in the following five areas:
Lack of trans witnesses
Latham’s inquiry conducted hearings on April 20 and 21, 2021. Across those two days, 42 witnesses were scheduled to give evidence. Do you know how many were trans or nonbinary children – that is, the people who stand to lose the most if this legislation passes?
Zero.
In fact, there was only one identified trans witness out of 42 (the amazing Teddy Cook, from ACON), plus one parent of a trans child. As far as I am aware, that means 40 witnesses out of the 42 scheduled to appear (or 95% of witnesses) were neither trans themselves nor the parent of a trans child.
This imbalance alone is enough to dismiss the validity of the entire inquiry.
It’s not like there weren’t other trans individuals and organisations ready and willing to give evidence either. As I understand it, the Gender Centre – described in its submission as ‘NSW’s leading trans led organisation, providing 95% of all trans specific services in the state’ that ‘support over 500 NSW transgender and gender diverse families generally’ – were not invited to appear.
The selection of non-trans witnesses was biased, too. Of the religious organisations invited to give evidence, only faith groups that expressed support for the Bill were given a guernsey.
As noted by Greens MLC David Shoebridge during the hearings: ‘Unfortunately, the Coalition and the Chair determined not to allow any witnesses to appear from the parts of the Christian faith who oppose the bill.’ (Hearing Transcript, 20 April, page 8).
This meant religious organisations that expressed their opposition to the Bill through their submissions – including the Pitt St Uniting Church, and Uniting Church LGBTIQ Network – did not receive an invitation to appear.
In my view, the lack of trans witnesses, and biased selection of others, rendered this inquiry process illegitimate from the outset.
2. Disrespectful treatment of submitters and witnesses
It wasn’t just the selection of witnesses that was unbalanced, but also how organisations that made submissions, or appeared as witnesses, were (mis)treated – especially by the chair.
Take, for example, the Catholic Education Diocese of Parramatta, who made a submission to the inquiry in which they expressed their opposition to Latham’s Bill.
For this ‘sin’, not only were they not invited, but they were attacked in their absence.
When Shoebridge noted that ‘The Chair and the Coalition would not allow them to come. They voted on majority to prevent them coming’, Latham ultimately responded with ‘Well, there has to be a degree of sanity here.’ (Hearing Transcript, 21 April, page 36).
Imagine, as the Chair of an inquiry, thinking it appropriate to imply an organisation that made a submission to that inquiry ‘lacked sanity’.
The attack worsened from there, with Latham asking the witness from Catholic Schools NSW (who did oppose the Bill and were not coincidentally offered an invitation) to provide data about enrolment and academic performance of schools in the Parramatta Diocese specifically:
‘My understanding is that a number of the Parramatta parents are none too happy about this position and that the Parramatta diocese enrolment share and academic results have collapsed in recent times because of the so-called progressive approach to education. Do you have some data on that that you can furnish to the Committee?’ (Hearing Transcript, 21 April, page 36).
In my opinion, there can be no justification for asking questions which suggest a vendetta against religious bodies which have the temerity to take a different policy view to yours.
Nor was this the only example of Latham’s disrespect to submitters or witnesses. Later that day he made a series of what can only be described as unprofessional remarks in response to the evidence of Georgia Burke, representing the LGBTI Subcommittee of Australian Lawyers for Human Rights.
Burke: ‘… The best interests of the children are entirely disregarded with the primacy of parents put to the forefront.’
Latham: ‘Jesus, seriously.’
Burke: ‘It is interesting to reflect on the comments of the special rapporteur to which we refer in our submission.’
Latham: ‘The best interests of the children are disregarded when the parents are put to the forefront?’
Shoebridge: ‘Carry on.’
[Labor MLC Anthony] D’Adam: ‘Carry on, they are just being rude.’
Latham: ‘That is unbelievable.’
Burke: ‘His report of 2010 – and I do have a copy with me if it assists the Committee for me to table that report.’
Latham: ‘Jesus Christ.’ (Hearing Transcript, 21 April, page 63).
[As an aside, it might be interesting to know what the religious fundamentalists who support Latham’s similarly-extreme ‘Religious Freedom’ Bill think about his blasphemy?]
As chair, Latham also accused witnesses of either ‘fabrication’ (saying to Ghassan Kassisieh of Equality Australia: ‘That is not what the Bill says. That is just a fabrication, I am sorry.’ Hearing Transcript, 20 April, page 63), or ‘making something up’ (to Jared Wilk of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties: ‘You see, that is the problem. You are making something up about the bill that is not actually true.’ Hearing Transcript, 21 April, page 65).
This is not the behaviour of somebody who should be in charge of anything, let alone an inquiry into legislation which carries the very real potential to undermine the human rights of some of the most vulnerable members of the community.
3. Allowing irrelevant evidence
The potential impact of Latham’s anti-trans kids Bill is incredibly broad – applying not just to classroom teaching, but also to ‘instruction, counselling and advice’ provided to students by principals, school counsellors, non-teaching staff, contractors, advisors and consultants, non-school based staff, contractors, advisors and consultants, and even volunteers (proposed new section 17C of the Education Act 1990).
However, one thing it doesn’t actually apply to is school sport. Despite this, Latham’s inquiry invited Katherine Deves from ‘Save Women’s Sport Australasia’ to address the Committee, where they were given free rein to make comments like:
‘It requires them [women and girls] to forego their right to compete on a level playing field in sport because fair competition is destroyed, athletic opportunities are lost and players’ safety is completely disregarded. On 1 December last year a senior bureaucrat in the NSW Sports Minister’s office told me that a woman would have to be killed before gender inclusion sports policies would be withdrawn.’ (Hearing Transcript, 21 April, page 24).
And
‘We believe that the female sports category should be for female-born females only. We need to start asking boys and men to be more accommodating of non-gender-conforming boys and accommodate them in their sports instead of expecting the girls and the women, to their own detriment, to accept them into their sports. We are getting stories now of boys competing in girls’ sports and winning and taking sports on the podium and taking sports on the team and girls being harmed.’ (Hearing Transcript, 21 April, page 27).[i]
Leaving to one side the lack of evidence to substantiate these claims, this testimony had nothing whatsoever to do with the Bill – a point which Shoebridge raised: ‘Point of order: There is not a single part of the terms of reference of this inquiry that relates to sport and I cannot see how either the opening submission or this question relates to the terms of reference.’
About which Latham eventually ruled: ‘I do not think censorship here is appropriate. The witness can answer the question.’ (Hearing Transcript, 21 April, page 27).
Except ensuring witnesses at least vaguely stick to the terms of reference of the inquiry is not censorship, but one of the core responsibilities of a Committee Chair, something Latham spectacularly failed to fulfil here.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, women’s sport was not the only unrelated matter that was allowed to be raised – Latham also provided ample space for witnesses to talk about access to bathrooms, something that is also unaffected by his legislation.
For example, Terri Kelleher of the Australian Family Association was given the opportunity to make the following comments:
‘Why would you want to set up – because part of the instructions or guidelines for schools as a result or a flow-on from teaching gender fluidity, you know, that people are the gender they feel and it may not be their natal sex, is to allow natal males into girls’ toilets. Now, that is not saying that all males or all boys who identify as girls are going to be a threat, but it sets up a situation where that can occur. This is very serious in the light of the child-on-child sexual abuse in schools.’ (Hearing Transcript, 20 April, pages 40-41).
And then allowed to elaborate:
‘One of the risks … is the staff is to monitor the length of time in a change room. So staff are to monitor the length of time. It puts teachers in a difficult situation. Are they to be rostered outside toilets? Does there always have to be someone supervising wherever the toilets may be used, which would be throughout the day?’ (page 41).
Which led to the following exchange between MLCs sitting on the Committee:
D’Adam: ‘Point of order: We are taking evidence on a bill that has nothing to do with unisex toilets.’
D’Adam: ‘It has nothing to do with it. It is outside the terms of reference of this inquiry and I would ask the Chair to bring the witness back to-‘
[Nationals MLC Wes] Fang: ‘I have been waiting for this one. ‘Any other matter’ – it has been called on me so many times.’
Latham: ‘Yes. Related matters. I think the use of – I raised earlier on the problem of boys declaring themselves to be girls to get into the girls’ change room. That was in order and I think this is in order as well.’ (page 41)
In effect, the Chair of the inquiry ruled that ‘bathroom panic’-style testimony was in order because he himself had raised the issue of change room access, from the Chair, earlier in the day. This is the opposite of an impartial investigation.
4. Providing a platform for transphobia
As we have already seen, by allowing witnesses to talk about unrelated matters like trans participation in sport and ‘bathroom panic’ (including rhetorically linking trans access to toilets to child sexual abuse), Latham ensured his inquiry provided a platform for transphobia. Nor were these the only examples of extreme prejudice against trans and gender diverse young people over those two days.
This includes multiple witnesses suggesting that the gender identities of the majority of trans and nonbinary kids were not real but instead the product of mental illness:
‘When parents are kept in the dark about gender ideology and about what children are exposed to related to gender fluidity, they face an increased risk of harm. School officials and others do not know of, or may disregard, a child’s personal history – perhaps trauma or abuse or other diagnosed conditions, whether autism or mental health issues. They may play a role in a child’s identity concerns.’ (Mary Hasson, Hearing Transcript, 21 April, page 3).
Dianna Kenny of something called the ‘Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine’ was permitted to make the following extraordinary – and extraordinarily offensive – claim:
‘There is a very minute number of people who are what we try to call genuinely trans, and suddenly we have seen a 4,000 per cent increase in the number of young people identifying as trans. Only a tiny fraction of that 4,000 per cent increase are going to be what we call genuinely trans. The rest of them are in the thrall of the trans lobby, and they have serious mental health issues and other things that need to be addressed.’ (Hearing Transcript, 21 April, page 33).
When asked by Labor MLC Anthony D’Adam about those people who Kenny claimed were not ‘genuinely transgender’ (‘Those who are not in that category – the others – you are saying that there is something wrong with them, that they are sick.’), Kenny replied:
‘It is a manifestation of serious mental health issues, yes. I work clinically with those people. I see them at close quarters. I work intensively with the families and with the young people themselves. The evidence is increasing exponentially that those young people have serious health issues that need to be addressed…’ (Hearing Transcript, 21 April, pages 33-34).[ii]
From my perspective, this does not read like a reasonable debate of issues related to the Bill but instead seems to be a free kick for witnesses to make derogatory comments about the mental health and wellbeing of trans and nonbinary kids.
Of course, being a parliamentary hearing about trans rights in 2021, a range of other transphobic tropes – from ‘desisters’[iii]/’de-transitioners’[iv] to ‘rapid onset gender dysphoria’[v] and ‘social contagion’[vi] – made predictable appearances (and, just as predictably, none were based on high-quality, independently-verified research, because, well, it doesn’t exist).
Mark Sneddon of the Institute of Civil Society even gravely warned that: ‘What we are trying to do – or what I understand this bill is trying to do – is to reduce the social contagion influence putting more people onto the conveyor belt of gender transition.’ (Hearing Transcript, 20 April, page 42).
A quote which, perhaps unintentionally, goes to the core of the whole debate. Through their evidence, these witnesses all appear to be implying that being trans or nonbinary is itself a negative thing, and should be avoided wherever possible, including through legislation which prevents students from even hearing that gender diversity exists.
Whereas the rest of us understand that a) trans and nonbinary people are a part of the natural spectrum of human gender identity (and indeed always have been), b) trans and nonbinary kids are awesome, and c) there are really two conveyor belts – one which lets trans and nonbinary kids be themselves and delivers them to health and happiness, and one which tells trans and nonbinary kids that they are wrong and should not exist, and abandons them to darkness and depression.
That is really what Latham’s Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020 is all about – keeping trans and nonbinary students in the dark. About who they are. And that who they are is okay. More than okay. Beautiful.
Latham’s legislation is deeply transphobic. Which means it is no surprise that so was the evidence of many of the witnesses appearing at his inquiry. And that includes Latham himself, who even deliberately deadnamed and misgendered a prominent transgender Australian. (Hearing Transcript, 20 April, page 48).
5. Giving evidence from the chair
The fifth and final way Latham’s inquiry was unbalanced is not directly linked to trans and gender diverse children, but nevertheless goes to how ‘un-parliamentary’ his behaviour was – and that was his frequent attempts to give evidence from the chair.
For example, after raising the (unverified) story of a student whose school counsellor supported their social transition against the wishes of their parents, he was asked by Shoebridge ‘Is that in evidence?’ and by D’Adam: ‘Point of order: Is the chair giving evidence?’ To which Latham replied:
‘That is in evidence – and did not tell the family. So, Jack has asked me a question. I have given you a brief summary and will be presenting more of that evidence as the inquiry unfolds…’ (emphasis added, Hearing Transcript, 20 April, pages 24-25).[vii]
Perhaps the most extreme example came when Latham attempted to ask Ghassan Kassisieh of Equality Australia about a range of non-LGBTI issues, before making unsubstantiated claims about climate change, leading not just the Greens’ David Shoebridge but even the Nationals’ Wes Fang to suggest Latham should not be doing so as chair:
Latham: ‘Climate change – that while there is evidence of warming, it is not at some of the alarmist levels that have been projected. Sea levels are not rising and Tim Flannery was wrong about his predictions that our dams in western Sydney would never fill again.’
Shoebridge: ‘Point of order: Simply making these unfounded, biased assertions from the chair on matters unrelated to the terms of reference of this inquiry is not of assistance and, in fact, it does not fit with any of the terms of reference of this inquiry.’
Fang: ‘To the point of order-‘
Latham: ‘It fits in the submission. It is the witness’s submission – wanting to know the other side of the story. I am seeking a response about the other side of the story.’
Shoebridge: ‘Call me old-fashioned but I was looking at the terms of reference of the inquiry.’
Fang: ‘To the point of order: I actually support Mr Shoebridge here. Chair, you should not be doing it and, like Mr Shoebridge, if you are going to make these unsubstantiated comments you should do it just as a participating member, like Mr Shoebridge does often through this Committee.’ (Hearing Transcript, 20 April, page 59).
Fang nails the problem here – Mark Latham should never have been permitted to prosecute the case for his own legislation as chair of the same Committee inquiring into it.
It was an inevitable conflict of interest, and just as inevitably led to serious shortcomings of the inquiry generally, and the hearings on April 20 and 21 in particular.
From a lack of trans witnesses, and only inviting faith bodies that supported the Bill to appear while ignoring those religious organisations that opposed it.
To criticising trans-supportive faith groups in their absence, implying they ‘lacked sanity’, and acting disrespectfully and unprofessionally to other witnesses.
Allowing completely irrelevant testimony, about trans inclusion in girl’s and women’s sports, and ‘bathroom panic’, which had exactly nothing to do with the legislation being considered.
And giving voice to transphobia, including providing a platform to witnesses who dismissed the gender identity of the majority of trans and nonbinary kids as not being real while simultaneously describing them as suffering ‘serious mental health issues’.
Before using the position of chair to give his own evidence, rather than impartially examining the evidence of witnesses.
If you were being charitable, you could describe these hearings, and the overall inquiry they were a part of, as a farce.
But, after reading through all of the testimony given over those two days, including the derogatory comments about some of the most vulnerable members of our community, I am not feeling especially charitable. So I will call it as it is:
This inquiry, and the fact Mark Latham has been allowed to serve as its chair, is a sick joke. And, if you can’t tell by now, I am not amused.
The other thing that is definitely not humorous? The fact the Coalition Government, and Labor Opposition, have allowed this embarrassing debasement of NSW Parliament to drag on for almost a full year.
This legislation seeks to erase trans and nonbinary kids in schools across NSW. It will cause harm to them, and to all LGBTI children and young people.
These things have been known since it was first introduced in August 2020 – and yet neither Gladys Berejiklian, nor Jodi McKay and now Chris Minns, have done the bare minimum: to speak out against it, and declare they will not support legislation that attacks kids.
What the fuck are they waiting for?
It’s beyond time for the major parties to finally reject Mark Latham’s Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020, and Latham’s equally unbalanced and transphobic inquiry into it.
NSW Parliament can be, should be, better than this. Trans and nonbinary kids need it to be.
For LGBTI people, if this post has raised issues for you, please contact QLife on 1800 184 527, or via webchat: https://qlife.org.au/
Or contact Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14.
Footnotes:
[i] Nor was Deves the only witness allowed to raise the irrelevant issue of trans inclusion in girl’s and women’s sports, with Terri Kelleher of the Australian Family Association making the following comments:
‘What right do they [girls in schools] have to fair sporting competitions? There is a worldwide movement at the moment speaking out for women’s and girl’s rights to their own sporting competitions on the ground that natal males have serious advantages over females.’ (Hearing Transcript, April 20, page 40).
[ii] Strangely enough, despite Kenny arguing that ‘genuinely transgender’ people are extremely rare, they are also capable of ‘destroying the fabric of the nuclear family’ (‘But to withdraw parental guidance and authority in the way that the transgender lobby has implemented with children declaring themselves to be transgender is really destroying the fabric of the nuclear family.’ Hearing Transcript, 21 April, page 28), which indicates trans people must have super-powers.
[iii] John Steenhof of the Human Rights Law Alliance (Hearing Transcript, 20 April, page 36) and Mark Sneddon of the Institute for Civil Society (Hearing Transcript, 20 April, page 42).
[iv] Patrick Byrne of the National Civic Council, who suggested that transition – and not transphobia – was the cause of high rates of depression and suicide amongst transgender people: ‘Are you going to teach that there is a growing movement of de-transitioners and the risk if you go all the way down the road to full sex change surgery, a highly intrusive medical surgery, and then the longer-term risks from that. The best study on that was in Sweden, I think it was, the long-term effects of … transitioning, which had a suicide rate of 19 or 20 times the rest of the population.’ (Hearing Transcript, 20 April, page 44), and Kirralie Smith of Binary Australia (Hearing Transcript, 21 April, page 9).
[v] Dianna Kenny of the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine (Hearing Transcript, 21 April, page 29 and page 31).
[vi] Mary Hasson (Hearing Transcript, 21 April, page 3), and a favourite phrase of Dianna Kenny, who used it multiple times, including in this truly non-sensical quote revealing she apparently does not understand the difference between gender identity and sexual orientation:
‘Basically, what is happening is that children are being taught erroneous information and based on erroneous information these children are becoming extremely confused and as through a process of social contagion we are seeing very large increases in the number of children declaring themselves either non-binary, transgender, genderqueer, asexual, pansexual, omni-sexual, demi-boys and demi-girls.’ (Hearing Transcript, 21 April, page 25).
[vii] Another example occurred after a witness attempted to cite Latham’s Second Reading Speech for the Bill as ‘evidence’:
D’Adam: ‘Just to further elaborate, obviously we have all heard the second reading speech.’
Shoebridge: ‘It is not evidence.’
D’Adam: ‘That is not necessarily evidence of what is occurring. It is an assertion from a Member of Parliament.’
Latham: ‘Order! There is a professional development course. I will show you the course. We have got it on tape.
Shoebridge: ‘There is no order. It is not evidence.’ (Hearing Transcript, 20 April, page 37).
Senate Standing Committee on Education and Employment
Submitted online via aph.gov.au
19 March 2021
To the Committee
Thank you for the opportunity to provide this submission regarding the Australian Education Legislation Amendment (Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children) Bill 2020.
I do so as a long-standing advocate for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community, and as a gay man who (barely) survived five years at a homophobic religious boarding school in Queensland in the early 1990s[i]and who hopes to help protect trans and gender diverse students from experiencing similar discrimination today.
Contrary to its name, this legislation is not about prohibiting the indoctrination of children, but instead appears to be motivated by prejudice against the gender identity and/or gender expression of trans and non-binary young people.
It is not about providing balance, but is instead aimed at banning the information these children need to grow up feeling safe and supported, and reach their full potential.
And it is not about ensuring all students enjoy an inclusive education, but instead seeks to erase trans and gender diverse kids. From the curriculum, and from the classroom.
These disturbing truths are revealed by Senator Hanson’s Second Reading Speech, where she spends almost half of its word count arguing against ‘gender theory indoctrination in schools’, which she claims ‘involves some teachers and schools pushing the idea that a child’s biological sex does not determine where you are male or female.’
Not only does Senator Hanson fail to understand the difference between sex assigned at birth and gender identity – and the existence of hundreds of thousands of trans and gender diverse Australians demonstrate that these two can and frequently do diverge.
But she also seems to believe that banning curriculum materials which mention said reality of gender diversity will somehow prevent children from becoming trans or non-binary in the first place (from the Second Reading Speech: ‘The preoccupation with gender identity by some teachers and schools is correlated with an increase in children identifying as transgender, which is why I say these educators are transgendering our children’).
I know from bitter personal experience that the consequence of a homophobic education, where the curriculum did not even acknowledge the existence of same-sex attraction let alone affirm that it was a valid sexual orientation, did not make me any less gay, but it did nearly cost me my life.
The same will inevitably be true for trans and gender diverse students should this legislation pass. The choice is not between whether a child is trans or non-binary on one hand, or cisgender on the other. The choice is between whether a trans or non-binary child is happy and healthy, or depressed and at significant risk of self-harm.
On this most basic of outcomes, our schools are currently failing. Badly. The recent findings of the Writing Themselves In 4[ii]survey indicate that, far from schools being overwhelmingly supportive environments where being trans and gender diverse is encouraged, in many, indeed most, there is either silence or active hostility.
From that report:
One-half (51.2%; n=1,953) of secondary school participants reported that trans and gender diverse people were never mentioned in a supportive or inclusive way;[iii]
Almost three-quarters of trans men (74.3%; n=278) and two-thirds of trans women (67.7%; n=46) and non-binary participants (65.8%; n=746) said that in the past 12 months they had felt unsafe or uncomfortable at their educational institution due to their sexuality or gender identity;[iv]
Only 41.0% (n=378) of trans and gender diverse participants in secondary schools reported being able to safely use their chosen name or pronouns in the past 12 months, while only 50.9% (n=469) were able to wear clothes that matched their gender identity;[v] and
Over seven-tenths (70.2%; n=2,579) of secondary school participants… reported hearing negative language about gender identity or gender expression sometimes or frequently in the past 12 months.[vi]
Many trans and gender diverse students are not thriving in these toxic environments. Nor are they being ‘created’ by overly-supportive schools and teachers. They are merely doing their best to survive despite the transphobia which far too often surrounds them.
There is one point on which I agree with Senator Hanson. In her Second Reading Speech, she declares that ‘Our children deserve an education that will allow them to reach their potential.’ Unlike Senator Hanson, however, I believe that this statement should apply to all students, and not just those who are cisgender.
Trans and non-binary children have the same right to learn, and grow, as any other child. As every other child. Our schools should be doing more to support them, not less. That includes increasing their visibility in the curriculum, rather than having all references to gender diversity erased because of discriminatory legislation proposed by an extremist Senator.
I call on the Senate Standing Committee on Education and Employment, and the Parliament more broadly, to reject this attack on some of Australia’s most vulnerable.
Recommendation: That the Australian Education Legislation Amendment (Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children) Bill 2020 be rejected in its entirety.
Before I conclude this submission, I would like to raise two additional arguments, both of which militate for rejection of this legislation.
First, the Australian Education Legislation Amendment (Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children) Bill 2020 needs to be seen in its wider context. In my view, it is merely one small part of a larger, dangerous and divisive culture war being waged right now against trans and gender diverse Australians.
The proponents of this culture war include organisations that were opposed to the right of all couples to marry irrespective of their sexual orientations, gender identities and/or sex characteristics. Having lost that fight, including through the 2017 same-sex marriage postal survey, they appear to have turned their attention to denying the fundamental rights of trans and gender diverse Australians, and especially trans and non-binary young people.
These organisations have found supporters in columnists, and media publications, that seem happy to publish attacks on the ability of trans kids just to be themselves.
Unfortunately, these organisations also appear to have found supporters in the Senate itself, with the passage of Senator Roberts’ motion number 1055, on Wednesday 17 March 2021. As well as seeking to reinforce the use of binary-only gender descriptors, it included the following concerning clauses (among others):
‘That the Senate notes that:
ii. broad scale genuine inclusion cannot be achieved through distortions of biological and relational descriptors,
iii. an individual’s right to choose their descriptors and pronouns for personal use must not dehumanise the human race and undermine gender.’
In response, I would submit that denying the existence of trans and non-binary people is a far greater threat to ‘broad scale genuine inclusion’. More importantly, a trans or non-binary person affirming their gender descriptors and pronouns does not pose any threat to any person who is prepared to accept and respect other people for who they are.
Nor does the use of diverse gender descriptors and/or pronouns ‘dehumanise the human race’ in any way. Indeed, I would encourage Senators who voted in support of that motion to reflect on exactly who was being dehumanised by its contents.
The anti-trans agenda has found even greater support among state and territory parliaments, including in my jurisdiction of NSW. The state leader of Senator Hanson’s Party has introduced his own legislation seeking to make life much more difficult for LGBTI students, and for trans and non-binary students in particular.
As I have written elsewhere,[vii] the Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020 is:
‘A Bill that seeks to prohibit any and all teaching that someone’s gender identity can be different to the gender assigned to them at birth.
That weaponises the so-called morality of transphobes to deny the reality of trans people.
A Bill that actually goes much, much further, by banning any ‘teaching, instruction, counselling and advice’ that acknowledges said lived reality, by anybody remotely connected to a school, from principals to parents volunteering in the school canteen.
That compels a school counsellor to remain silent when a suicidal trans student just needs to hear the most basic words of comfort: that they are not alone, and who they are is okay.
A Bill that recycles failed and flawed policies from Thatcher-era Britain, reviving ‘section 28’-style laws which saw a generation of lesbian, gay and bisexual students marginalised and made invisible, without access to safe sex education even at the height of the HIV epidemic.
Policies that were abandoned in the UK almost two decades ago, now being contemplated for LGBT students right here in 2021.
A Bill that seeks to insert an ignorant, inappropriate and incorrect definition of intersex in NSW law for the first time, further stigmatising individuals that still endure the most significant human rights abuses of any group within the LGBTI community.’
While discussing the Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020, I should note that were both it and Senator Hanson’s own Bill to pass their respective Parliaments, it is highly likely the Australian Education Legislation Amendment (Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children) Bill 2020 would result in the defunding of NSW public schools.
That is because of the operation of proposed section 22AA of the Australian Education Act 2013 (Cth), and especially sub-section (1)(b):
‘A payment of financial assistance under this Act to a State or Territory is subject to the condition that the State or Territory has in force laws that…
require a staff member (however described) of a school to provide students with a balanced presentation of opposing views on political, historical and scientific issues as such issues arise in the teaching of a subject.’
Given the NSW Bill expressly prohibits the teaching of particular views, including in relation to the scientific diversity of gender identity, it cannot possibly be described as balanced according to that word’s ordinary meaning.
Putting that particular issue to one side, I raise the broader context of the Bill currently before the Committee because it will have consequences outside of its own flawed provisions.
If the Committee, and Parliament, choose to support the Australian Education Legislation Amendment (Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children) Bill 2020, it will only embolden the proponents of the culture war against trans and non-binary kids.
On the other hand, the Committee, and Parliament, have the opportunity through this inquiry and subsequent legislative debate to send a strong signal that trans and gender diverse Australians have the right to be themselves, and above all that trans and non-binary children will be protected against further attacks.
The second and final additional argument I would like to raise relates to the impracticability of the Bill itself. Specifically, proposed section (7) of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Act 2008 (Act), provides that:
‘The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority must ensure that:
(a) the national school curriculum is developed and administered to provide a balanced presentation of opposing views on political, historical and scientific issues; and
(b) information, resources, support and guidance that promote a balanced presentation of opposing views on political, historical and scientific issues are provided to the teaching profession.’
However, the Bill does not define what is meant by the term ‘balance’. The Explanatory Memorandum fails to provide further clarification, simply noting this provision requires ACARA ‘to promote a balanced presentation of opposing views where they exist’ (emphasis added).
Which leaves us with Senator Hanson’s Second Reading Speech to assist with legislative interpretation. In the context of her views on, or rather against, climate change science –which dominates the other half of her statement – the notion of ‘balance’ becomes problematic.
It appears Senator Hanson would like to provide an equal platform in the science curriculum to climate change denialism alongside evidence-based climate science which irrefutably shows the earth is heating, and that this heating is caused by human activity.
To do what Senator Hanson proposes – to provide space in the science curriculum just because some people believe it, rather than because it is based on evidence – would undermine the very nature of science itself.
Nevertheless, it is the application of the Bill’s vague notions of ‘balance’ to the subject of history that reveals just how unworkable this legislation is.
To raise just one example, how would this legislation affect the history curriculum around World War II, and specifically the Holocaust? Abhorrent though their views are, some people continue to espouse Holocaust denialist arguments. To apply the language used in the Explanatory Memorandum, they are ‘opposing views (about history) where they exist’.
It is therefore at least possible that, if passed, the Australian Education Legislation Amendment (Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children) Bill 2020 would mandate ACARA to include Holocaust denialism as part of the Australian history curriculum.
Such an outcome is obviously unacceptable. It reflects a Bill that is an unworkable mess, and one that would create a mess of Australia’s curriculum, not just in history, but in politics, science and elsewhere too.
In my view, this impracticability is the inevitable outcome of a Senator trying to impose their ideological obsessions – in this case, climate change denialism, and the erasure of trans and non-binary kids – through the national education system.
I would much prefer our school curriculum to be drafted by experts who understand their subject matter, as well as the learning and developmental needs of children – all children – rather than a Senator who does not seem to even understand her own legislation.
I sincerely hope the majority of the Committee, and the Parliament, share that preference.
Thank you for considering this submission as part of the inquiry into the Australian Education Legislation Amendment (Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children) Bill 2020. Please do not hesitate to contact me, at the details provided, should the Committee require additional information.
Sincerely
Alastair Lawrie
Pauline Hanson has joined her NSW state leader Mark Latham in introducing legislation attacking trans and non-binary kids. Just like his Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020, her Australian Education Legislation Amendment (Prohibiting the Indoctrination of Children) Bill 2020 must be rejected.
Last weekend was the first Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade and/or Party I have missed since 2003. Although I think I had a pretty good reason not to be there – I was attending my grandma’s 100th birthday party in Rockhampton, Queensland (near where I grew up).
Nevertheless, the day before Mardi Gras I received a letter reminding me of just how far there is left to go before we achieve genuine, substantive equality for LGBTI Australians, and especially for trans and gender diverse children and young people.
But, first, some context. In August last year, NSW One Nation Leader Mark Latham introduced the Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020. As I wrote at the time, this proposed law is the worst attack on LGBTI rights in this country this century.
If passed, the Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020 would:
Prohibit any ‘teaching, instruction, counselling and advice’ that gender identity can be different to sex assigned at birth, effectively erasing and invisibilising trans and gender diverse students in schools across NSW
Introducing a UK section 28-style clause making it difficult for teachers, principals and counsellors to support lesbian, gay and bisexual students, and
Enacting an inaccurate and offensive definition of intersex in NSW law for the first time.
The NSW Legislative Council Education Committee is currently conducting an inquiry into this Bill. Unfortunately, the Chair of that inquiry is… Mark Latham. In which case, I decided to bypass the Committee and instead write directly to the majority of MPs calling on them to be champions for trans and gender diverse kids, rather than their bullies.
I have received a small number of responses to date, but the most significant so far arrived in my inbox last Friday, March 5 2021. It came from the Member for Riverstone, Mr Kevin Conolly – who, incidentally, is also the NSW Government Parliamentary Secretary for Education (and therefore a direct adviser to and influencer of the Minister for Education, the Hon Sarah Mitchell). Here is what he wrote:
Dear Mr Lawrie,
Thank you for contacting me to express your view about the Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020.
You appear to have misunderstood the intent and effect of the Bill on a number of levels.
The first thing to state about the Bill is that it gives effect to internationally recognised human rights explicitly stated in international agreements to which Australia (like nearly all nations) is a signatory:
Article 18, part 4 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states:
‘The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, when applicable, legal guardians to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions.’
Article 5 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child:
‘Parties shall respect the responsibilities, rights and duties of parents or, where applicable, the members of the extended family or community as provided for by local custom, legal guardians or other persons legally responsible for the child, to provide, in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child, appropriate direction and guidance in the exercise by the child of the rights recognised in the present Convention.’
Article 26(3) of Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
‘Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.’
I do not agree that the Bill is based on a sick ideology, as you assert. It is based, in my view, on the common sense proposition that it is parents who are best placed and most likely to focus on the best interests of their child, rather than teacher unions, academics or activists with their own political agenda.
In prohibiting the teaching of ‘gender fluidity’ the Bill would preclude the teaching of the false and unscientific proposition that gender is something other than biologically determined.
To state this does not in any way suggest that it is better for young people experiencing gender dysphoria to ‘not exist at all’. I’m sure that Hon. Mark Latham would wholeheartedly agree with you that young people in this situation should be ‘happy and healthy, … safe and supported.’ This is far more likely to be the case if they are in the care of their parents and avoid premature chemical or surgical interventions while they grow and mature.
It is a fact that the great majority of cases of young people with gender dysphoria are resolved in time without any such interventions if children and adolescents are supported by loving families and allowed to make their own decisions when older. Most are resolved with the person coming to terms with their biological gender.
I note that you have mentioned ‘LGBTI’ a number of times in your email. However the Bill has no impact whatsoever on questions of homosexuality, only on the specific issue of so-called ‘gender fluidity’.
In my view, quite contrary to your assertion, the Bill would facilitate a school counsellor or teacher to help a child or young person by allowing counselling to consider all the future options available to the person rather than requiring only one predetermined option (i.e. ‘transition’) to be discussed.
The Bill is a positive step forward because it provides the opportunity for parents to provide genuine selfless care to young people rather than leave them at the mercy of activists whose ‘care’ is far more for their ideological cause than it is for the young person facing difficult challenges. In doing so it upholds universally recognised basic human rights, and responsibilities of parents towards their children.
Yours sincerely
Kevin Conolly MP
Member for Riverstone
*****
There is obviously a lot to unpack here. First of all, it is clear that Mr Conolly is selectively quoting from some international human rights instruments, while ignoring other key principles. This includes Article 26 of the ICCPR, which states:
‘All persons are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to the equal protection of the law. In this respect, the law shall prohibit any discrimination and guarantee to all persons equal and effective protection against discrimination on any ground such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property or other status.’
There is no doubt that a Bill which seeks to erase trans and gender diverse students, make life much more difficult for LG&B kids, and stigmatise intersex children, is discriminatory against LGBTI people.
Indeed, as others have written, it is likely that the Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020 will ultimately be found to be unlawful because it contravenes the provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth).
But misinterpreting international human rights law is the least of the problems in Mr Conolly’s correspondence.
He also doesn’t seem to understand the Bill itself. The Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020 establishes strict limits on any teaching or counselling of anything to do with what it describes as ‘matters of parental primacy’ – which is defined very broadly to explicitly include ‘matters of personal wellbeing and identity including gender and sexuality’.
Therefore, his protestation that ‘the Bill has no impact whatsoever on questions of homosexuality’ is not only patently false, but makes me question whether he has even read the legislation he is so ardently defending.
On that note, I find it incredibly curious that a member of the NSW Government – and a Parliamentary Secretary at that – is not only publicly supporting One Nation legislation (‘The Bill is a positive step forward…’), but also defending and apparently speaking on behalf of the NSW One Nation Leader (‘I’m sure that Hon. Mark Latham would…’).
But, of course, the worst aspects of Mr Conolly’s letter relate to his views about gender identity.
On this topic, he appears to assert that there is actually no such thing as trans and gender diverse people (‘In prohibiting the teaching of ‘gender fluidity’ the Bill would preclude the teaching of the false and unscientific proposition that gender is something other than biologically determined’). I’m sure that revelation would be surprising to trans and gender diverse people across NSW.
Nevertheless, the most offensive aspect of Mr Conolly’s correspondence arrives near its conclusion, where he argues ‘the Bill would facilitate a school counsellor or teacher to help a child or young person by allowing counselling to consider all the future options available to the person rather than requiring only one predetermined option (i.e. ‘transition’) to be discussed’.
Except that, given those same counsellors and teachers will be explicitly prohibited from even mentioning that gender identity can be different to sex assigned at birth, the only option they will be permitted to present to struggling children is that they simply not be trans or gender diverse.
It is at least arguable that what Mr Conolly is calling for is for counsellors and teachers to provide anti-trans conversion practices in every school across NSW.
It is extraordinary this letter was written by a member of the NSW Liberal/National Government. It is deeply troubling that it was done so by the Parliamentary Secretary for Education, commenting on and explicitly supporting legislation within his portfolio.
This stands in marked contrast to the failure of the NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, Deputy Premier, John Barilaro, and Education Minister, Sarah Mitchell, to take any position on the Bill whatsoever. Indeed, they collectively delegated their reply to my letter to a bureaucrat in the Department of Education, who wrote:
‘The NSW Government will respond to the proposed bill after careful consideration to ensure all relevant legislation and protections are considered.’
Now that the Parliamentary Secretary for Education has declared his personal support for the Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020, I believe this studious refusal to adopt a position is no longer tenable. At a certain point, being non-committal ends up being complicit.
The failure of the NSW Premier to oppose Mark Latham’s awful legislative assault on trans and gender diverse kids is particularly untenable given another development last weekend: Ms Berejiklian’s attendance at the SCG for the Mardi Gras Parade (as tweeted by Commonwealth Liberal MP, Dave Sharma – pictured below).
In my view, if you are prepared to come and celebrate diversity with us – diversity of sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics – then you must be prepared to defend that diversity.
Against attacks by fringe extremist parties in the NSW Legislative Council.
And against support for those attacks by prominent members of your very own Government.
As I wrote previously, ‘It is time for [NSW Parliamentarians] to make your decision about the Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020. Champion. Or bully. The choice is yours.’
Right now, that choice belongs to the NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian.
Berejiklian must understand the extremely serious consequences if she makes the wrong decision. Because instead of being able to celebrate their own 100th birthdays early in the 22nd century, some trans and gender diverse students in NSW schools will struggle to reach their 18th.
*****
For LGBTI people, if this post has raised issues for you, please contact QLife on 1800 184 527, or via webchat: https://qlife.org.au/
Or contact Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14.
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