Labor, the Greens and Liberal Speaker, Sue Hickey, failed to heed the advice of legal and academic experts, including the Solicitor-General and former Tasmanian Bar Association President, Chris Gunson, and today passed radical amendments to the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act and the Anti-Discrimination Act.
Women Speak Tasmania Spokesperson, Bronwyn Williams, said –
‘Many legitimate concerns about these changes have been raised by community members and those with specialised knowledge of their potential legal consequences’.
‘Those concerns have been dismissed as ‘fear-mongering’ by the proponents of the new laws and their supporters. Groups and individuals opposing the changes have been labelled “cruel” and “awful” under cover of parliamentary privilege, and public name-calling has been rife’.
‘But, in Canada, rape crisis centres have been denied funding if they refuse to admit intact males who identify as female. This is a very real problem for vulnerable women, and one of the unintended consequences the supporters of the new laws refer to as “nonsense”’.
‘An EMRS poll conducted in December last year showed over 70 per cent of Tasmanians opposed the birth certificate reforms. But the proponents claim the changes have been widely consulted. The question needs to be asked, “Where is the evidence of that broad consultation”?. There is no evidence, and Labor and the Greens can expect a significant backlash at the upcoming Upper House and federal elections’.
‘These laws passed today at a time when similar law reform proposals are being sent to a full Parliamentary Inquiry in New Zealand due to a lack of proper community consultation’.
‘In the UK, the push to implement ‘trans-inclusive’ policies has been reconsidered, with the prison service setting up transgender prison wings to protect the safety and human rights of female prisoners, and the National Health service reviewing its policies on transgender persons accessing women’s hospital wards’.
‘Following Martine Navratilova’s recent public statement on the unfairness of biological males competing in women sports, a global campaign has been set up by sports women to oppose transgender male to female persons participating in women’s sporting competitions’.
‘It will only be a matter of time before this legislation is challenged in Tasmania and potentially in the High Court. Girls’ and women’s rights remain unprotected under these seriously flawed laws’, said Bronwyn Williams.
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