Today, we sent the below letter to NSW Premier Chris Minns and Members of the NSW Parliament about the grave concerns that Women's Forum Australia, our supporters and the NSW community, continue to have with regard to independent MP Alex Greenwich's Equality Legislation Amendment (LGBTIQA+) Bill 2023 and his recently proposed amendments:
By email to [email protected]
Dear Premier,
Re: Updated Equality Legislation Amendment (LGBTIQA+) Bill 2023
Following my correspondence on this matter in September 2023 and July this year, I am writing to you about the grave concerns Women's Forum Australia, our supporters and the NSW community, continue to have regarding Mr Alex Greenwich's Equality Legislation Amendment (LGBTIQA+) Bill 2023 and his recently proposed amendments.
I include links to the following documents which give further information about, and context to our concerns:
• Our submission on the original Bill to the Committee on Community Services.
• A copy of our report 'A Fair Playing Field: Protecting Women's Single-Sex Sport'.
What is equally concerning is the manner in which we have been told the amended Bill is to be supported and bulldozed through the NSW Parliament by the Government as early as tonight. I was told in September by a representative for the NSW Attorney-General that “The NSW Government is considering the findings of the report and the provisions of the Equality Bill in detail before forming a position. Consideration of this legislation is a complex work spanning multiple portfolio areas, which the Government will undertake thoughtfully and carefully.”
Given that the Government had not yet even formed a position on the original bill – which it agreed required such careful consideration – it is alarming to learn that the Government may be planning to ram the amended bill through the Parliament, in what appears to be a conscious and deliberate ambush to ensure as little consideration of, and opposition to, the amended Bill as possible.
While multiple provisions have now been removed from the original Bill, the Bill still contains a raft of anti-women, anti-children reforms. For example:
• Adults can still change their legal sex under the Bill with the bare minimum of safeguards, allowing men to legally self-identify as women and access female-only spaces, services and sports. This effectively eradicates female-only spaces and other sex-based rights, and jeopardises safety, privacy, dignity and fairness for women and girls. The real-world impact of ‘sex self-ID’ laws and policies on women and girls includes anything from lost opportunities when it comes to female-only sport and awards, to self-exclusion by women and girls from female-only spaces due to privacy and safety concerns, to actual rape and sexual assault in female-only spaces by men identifying as women. The argument that 'every other state has done it' (aka erased women's rights) is simply not good enough.
• Children and young people are still able to change their legal sex. Allowing vulnerable children and young people to concretise a transgender identity by legally changing their sex, encourages them further down a process of ‘social transitioning’, towards the track of harmful and irreversible ‘medical transitioning’, which is being increasingly criticised and restricted internationally, and which is disproportionately impacting young women and girls. Allowing children to concretise a transgender identity in law, is at odds with developing approaches that recognise that gender dysphoria is often both transient and the result of underlying social and mental health issues.
• Individuals can face penalties and restrictions (such as apprehended violence orders) for ‘outing’ or ‘threatening to out a person’by disclosing their ‘gender history’ i.e. their biological sex, which presents concerns for those who may have legitimate safety or other reasons for disclosing a person’s biological sex, particularly if the person is a biological male presenting as a female.
• Prostituted women will have reduced safeguards, whereby it will no longer be a crime to live off the earnings of prostitution of another person. Women, already vulnerable to the violence and exploitation rife within the sex industry, deserve to retain the protection currently afforded by a law that prohibits family members (abusive husbands or adult sons, for example) pimping out their wives, mothers, girlfriends or daughters. Any reforms to prostitution laws should follow the lead of truly progressive and pro-woman legislation in countries like Sweden, Norway, Canada and France, which have moved away from decriminalisation and deregulation and sought to decrease the demand and legitimacy of a deeply misogynistic industry.
• Reforms facilitating parentage orders for those who illegally engage in overseas commercial surrogacy will legitimise the practice, encouraging the exploitation and commodification of vulnerable women – particularly those from poor countries and disadvantaged backgrounds – as wombs for rent and children as products for sale. If current laws prohibiting overseas commercial surrogacy were actually enforced, there would be no need for parentage orders for those engaging in this illegal practice. It is also unclear how reforms to surrogacy laws could be supported when there is currently a comprehensive review of the Surrogacy Act being undertaken by the NSW Attorney-General.
These reforms endanger, discriminate against, and/or commodify and exploit women and children, and in some cases, put at risk the rights and freedoms of NSW citizens. They are out of step with evolving research, policies and developments overseas. I note that none of our concerns were able to be addressed by those in favour of the Bill at the parliamentary hearing, a hearing that we were not invited to participate in despite our work and standing in the community on a significant number of issues dealt with by the Bill.
The Bill’s regressive reforms have also received overwhelming opposition from the NSW community, and it is appalling that the Government sees fit to push them through regardless. Our supporters have signed a petition with nearly 30,000 signatures calling on Parliament to reject them, and over 25,000 NSW residents signed an official parliamentary petition asking it to do the same (I note that this petition has yet to receive a response). In the Committee’s own survey on the matter, an overwhelming 85% of the 13,000 respondents were opposed to the Bill.
Every person deserves respect, equality, and care under our laws, but the reforms in Mr Greenwich's Bill are counterproductive to those principles. At best, the reforms elevate the rights of some groups over others. At worst, they are to the detriment of all, including those they are meant to help.
I urge you to listen to the concerns of women’s and children’s advocates and the broader community being raised about these reforms, and to protect the rights and welfare of all NSW citizens by rejecting this harmful Bill. Your choice to either reject or support these dangerous and regressive reforms will not be forgotten.
I am available should you wish to discuss any aspect of this letter further.
Yours sincerely,
Rachael Wong
Chief Executive Officer
Women’s Forum Australia
Women’s Forum Australia is an independent think tank that undertakes research, education and public policy advocacy on issues affecting women and girls, with a particular focus on addressing behaviours and practices that are harmful and abusive to them. We are a non-partisan, non-religious, tax-deductible charity. We do not receive any government funding and rely solely on donations to make an impact. Support our work today.
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