Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move an amendment, as circulated in my name, to the government's amendment:

At the end of the motion, add:

"and, in respect of the Sex Discrimination Amendment (Acknowledging Biological Reality) Bill 2024, the bill be referred immediately to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee for inquiry and report by 11 February 2025".

The purpose of this bill is to amend the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 to re-establish the definitions of 'man' and 'woman' based on biological sex, removing the concept of gender identity from the act. The Sex Discrimination Act 1984 was amended in 2013 to include gender identity as a protected attribute, which created ambiguity around the legal definitions of men and women and undermined the act's original focus on biological sex. This bill seeks to restore clarity by reaffirming the biological distinctions between men and women and ensuring that legal protections are based on immutable biological characteristics.

The activists who pretend that biology and gender are somehow contrived or constructed, and those who believe them and enable them, ignore reality in the most calculated, malevolent ways. I use those terms because their ideology is directly harming women and children and permanently destroying countless lives in Australian families. These are the casualties of the ideological war on the reality that is human biology. Men and women, boys and girls—these are not identities to be swapped or changed by laws, regulations or declarations. They are determined by biology: chromosomes, DNA and the physical features we are born with.

We've seen a massive industry quickly emerge to mask or change the physical features that denote the gender we are born to, but the fundamental thing that determines who and what we are, that unique combination of molecules we call DNA, cannot be changed. It's inherited from our parents—the man and woman who conceived us. This is the unchangeable reality that gender activists and their enablers cannot change either. It's a reality they pretend does exist, yet it's the basis of procreation for almost every form of life on earth that's not microscopic. That includes every mammal, every primate and every human being. It is what we are. It is how we come to be. It's the basis of our very existence. The evidence, the facts that support this fundamental truth, cannot credibly be denied. Those who would have us deny it are directly attacking the rights of biological women.

For women in Australia it's a new battle for their rights and freedoms all over again. Biological men who claim to be women are intruding on the spaces and rights that real women have fought for over many decades. Men are invading women's bathrooms and change rooms, places where women have every right to expect privacy. This has been allowed to happen even in schools. Men are invading women's sports, putting women's safety at risk and making a complete joke of fair competition with their unfair physical advantages. Men are invading women's spaces online, spaces developed specifically as havens from the unaccountable abuse they often receive online.

As we saw in the case of Sall Grover's Giggle app, the law and courts provide them with no protection against these invasions. The courts are enabling these invasions.

Generations of Australian women have sacrificed and fought for these exclusive spaces. Their hard-won rights are now under direct attack. That's why I'm moving this amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act. Men may identify as women, undergo drug treatments and cosmetic surgery and wear dresses and make-up to superficially change their appearance, but that doesn't mean they belong with real women who were born as women. With this amendment, One Nation seeks to define these women for who and what they are and to protect their hard-won rights. We don't accept the ridiculous idea that this constitutes an attack on the rights of trans people. It is quite simply a defence against their attacks on the rights of Australian women and girls everywhere. I will keep fighting for this, and the majority of Australians with common sense will actually stand by what I'm trying to do here.

You want to shut this down. You're not even prepared to take it to an inquiry and let the people come before you—no debate; no nothing. That's what this government is about: shutting down everything that you don't want to debate about. You're not interested in the women out there that are fighting for their rights. That's what disgusts me about you. What are you frightened of? What are you frightened of in here from the women out there—