Tag: gender identity
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Premier backtracks on commitment to consultation on conversion bill
Women Speak Tasmania (WST) is calling on Premier Jeremy Rockliff to honour his 2023 commitment to ensure the Tasmanian community has an opportunity to participate in consultation on proposed conversion practices legislation. WST’s petition opposing the Bill, sponsored by Michael Ferguson MP, has attracted almost 2,000 signatures in just four days, demonstrating growing public concern…
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Greens’ Conversion Practices Bill 2026: Our Position
The Tasmanian Greens have released a consultation draft of the Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill 2026. The Bill proposes to ban practices that seek to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. It creates new criminal offences, gives significant powers to the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner, and allows any person to make a report. Our…
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Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill 2026 – Email sent to Members of the Tasmanian Parliament
Email sent to Members of the Tasmanian Parliament on 27 July 2026 Dear Member of Parliament, I am writing on behalf of Women’s Speak Tasmania to provide you with our submission on the consultation draft of the Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill 2026, which has been released by the Tasmanian Greens. The formal submission has been…
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Women Speak Tasmania calls for gender identity to be removed from Conversion Practices Bill
Women Speak Tasmania has lodged a formal submission on the Tasmanian Greens’ Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill 2026 and provided copies to every Member of the Tasmanian Parliament. The organisation supports a targeted prohibition on conversion practices directed at sexual orientation but strongly opposes the inclusion of gender identity within the same legislative framework. The submission…
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On Restoring Biological Definitions in the Sex Discrimination Act – Email to Andrew Wilkie MP
I sent Andrew one of his postcards inviting contact. I urged him to work for restoring the definition of ‘woman’ in the SDA. This is the reply I got, on July 9. Dear Anne Thank you for taking the time to return Andrew’s postcard. Andrew acknowledges your views, but does not agree with attempts to…
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When Language Becomes Power: From US Supreme Court Clarity to Tasmanian Confusion
On 30 June 2026, the United States Supreme Court delivered a landmark ruling affirming that states may determine eligibility for women’s and girls’ sports based on biological sex. In West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, the Court held that laws reserving female sporting categories for biological females are consistent with Title IX and…
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Detailed Response to the TLRI Report on Legal Recognition of Sex and Gender 2020
In June 2020 the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute released its Final Report No. 31 on Legal Recognition of Sex and Gender. The report reviewed the 2019 changes to birth certificate laws that introduced self-identification of gender and concluded that it could identify no significant negative impacts from those changes. Women Speak Tasmania did not agree.…
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Analysis of The Yogyakarta Principles and Why They Conflict with Women’s Rights Under International Law
What are the Yogyakarta Principles? The Yogyakarta Principles (often called “YP”) are a set of 38 principles plus 111 extra state obligations created in 2006 and updated in 2017. They claim to show how existing international human rights law should apply to sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics. They are not a…
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The Hidden Cost of Gender Ideology in Australian Prisons: Women’s Safety Sacrificed
Over the past months, a series of highly publicised cases across multiple Australian jurisdictions has raised grave concerns about prison placement policies that allow male prisoners to be housed in women’s correctional facilities on the basis of gender identity or legal sex change rather than biological sex. In several documented instances, these policies have coincided…
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Reforming the Anti-Discrimination Act: Why We Asked the Attorney-General to Add “Sex” to the Law
On 15 December 2025, Women Speak Tasmania met with the Tasmanian Attorney-General, the Hon. Guy Barnett MP, to discuss a matter we believe is fundamental to the safety, dignity and legal recognition of women and girls in this state. At that meeting we formally presented our submission calling for reform of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1998…