Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a strange world we live in when we need scientific reports to advise a major international sporting body that it's not safe or fair for males to play full-contact rugby against women. World Rugby has recently published on its website research findings from a range of experts in biology, physiology, sports science and sports medicine who participated in a process looking at the inclusion of trans athletes in rugby. One of the findings is that there is likely to be at least a 20 to 30 per cent greater risk of injury when a female player is tackled by someone who has gone through male puberty. This research has been reported in some sections of the media recently. Strangely, many mainstream media outlets haven't mentioned it.

When Australians hear about this research showing that males have advantages over females in sport, the most common response is a complete lack of surprise. Who needs scientific research to tell us that the average male has major advantages in speed, strength and power over the average female? The people who do need to read this research are the CEOs of our peak sporting bodies, because when it comes to protecting the integrity and safety of women's sport they have completely taken leave of their senses.

Sport Australia's guidelines for the inclusion of transgender and gender diverse people in sport makes the statement that for Australian sporting organisations:

… participation in sport should be based on a person's affirmed gender identity and not the sex they were assigned at birth

Along with Sport Australia and the Australian Human Rights Commission, who else has signed up to these guidelines and the idea that your sex should be irrelevant to whether you can compete in women's sport? Just the Coalition of Major Professional and Participation Sports, which includes Rugby Australia, the Australian Football League and the NRL. These full-contact sports have taken the position that women in their competitions had better brace themselves for a 30 per cent increase in their risk of injury so that administrators can pat themselves on the back for being inclusive.

The good news is that right now Rugby Australia has the opportunity to reset the balance and stand up for female athletes. World Rugby has given them the science which quantifies the risks and the disadvantages to women. Rugby Australia should make a stand that women's sport is for females and that men's sport is for males. The other major Australian sports should pull their heads out of the sand, look at the publicly available research and come to the same commonsense conclusion. It is not good enough for organised sport to hide behind activist interpretations of the Sex Discrimination Act and claim that the law compels them to prioritise gender identity over sex. It doesn't. If Sport Australia and Australia's major sporting codes won't look at the facts and use their common sense to ensure integrity of their women's competitions at every level, not just the elite competition, then we have to ask the question seriously as to why Australian taxpayers hand over public money to these sporting codes to promote female participation in sport.

On top of ignoring the unfairness and the safety concerns of encouraging biological males to play women's sport, the environment that Sport Australia and the major codes have created at the moment is that if you're a female, or maybe the parent of a 16-year-old who wants to enjoy playing women's football or women's rugby on a level playing field then you'd better not have a problem with that, because your league is probably signed up to an inclusion policy like the one advocated in Sport Australia's guidelines which stipulates that sporting organisations should have a publicly available inclusion policy in place which clearly articulates that participation in sport should be based on a person's affirmed gender identity. So if you say you're not comfortable playing women's contact sports against biological males, you are at risk of breaching your league's inclusion policy and being suspended or even banned.

So many women have contacted me with concerns about this issue, but they are worried that, if they speak publicly or even internally, they might face consequences at their club or at their place of work. Just this week, we've seen yet another example in the United States of a woman being fired by her employer—a literary agent—for tweeting about sex and gender issues. We've seen this happen in the US and in the United Kingdom. How do Australians know that they are able to speak freely about women's rights and the reality of biological sex without being censured or fired by their employer? The idea that someone could lose their job or be banned from the sport they love for acknowledging that sex exists should be alarming to every fair-minded Australian.

S enate adjourned at 19 : 50