Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If anyone thought it was an oversight in 2013 when the Gillard Labor government removed the definition of 'woman' from the Sex Discrimination Act and destroyed the rights of women to have single-sex services, spaces and sports, today showed once and for all that it was no accident. Not only did the Labor Party deliberately turn the act designed to protect women into one designed to punish women; today they teamed up with the Greens to block any possibility in this parliament of fixing the act to protect women. Mr Albanese, as the Leader of the Labor Party, and Mr Adam Bandt, as the Leader of the Australian Greens, are dictating to 13 million Australian women and girls that we are not allowed to have single-sex services or spaces. They are dictating that a woman elected to this parliament is not even allowed to introduce a bill that attempts to restore the rights that women and girls used to have under the Sex Discrimination Act.

In the 2022 election campaign Anthony Albanese was asked directly what a woman is. His answer at the time was delivered promptly and correctly: 'An adult female.' When he was seeking the vote of women he unequivocally said that a woman is an adult female. But today his government, along with the Greens, blocked the introduction of a bill that attempted to confirm in law that a woman is a member of the female sex. They claimed it was dangerous for the parliament to even be able to debate a bill which would have clarified exactly the same position that the Prime Minister himself pretended to agree with two years ago.

I have been trying for years to warn that the Sex Discrimination Act is broken. I warned that the sex based exemptions that were written into the act specifically to protect single-sex sports and services for women and girls were impossible to rely on because the Gillard amendments had upended the definition of 'sex' so that 'woman' can mean 'an adult male' and 'sex' is apparently based on the clothes you wear and what a state government lets you put as your preferred gender on your driver's licence. But people like the Prime Minister and smug, condescending left-wing men around this country said: 'No, ignore her. She doesn't know what she's talking about, and it's not important anyway.'

Now, in the Tickle v Giggle case, we have seen a court in this country confirm that it is exactly how I said it is. We saw the Human Rights Commission and the Federal Court say that human beings can change their sex, and your sex is determined not by your biology but by the clothes you wear and how you identify. The result was that a woman has been punished and fined for operating a single-sex app for women and trying to stop a man from intruding into it.

For years after the Gillard government removed the rights of Australian women and girls to single-sex sports and spaces, Labor was still pretending this wasn't the case. When I presented the Sex Discrimination and Other Legislation Amendment (Save Women's Sport) Bill 2022 to the Senate—a bill to make sure that offering single-sex female sport couldn't be found to be unlawful—the Prime Minister claimed it wasn't necessary because there was already an exemption for single-sex sport. Now we know that that exemption can't be relied upon because a biological male can be considered legally female for the purposes of the act, rendering the exemption useless. The government cannot claim they didn't know this because the Federal Court and the Human Rights Commission have told them very clearly that a biological male can be considered legally female and force his way into any space, service or sport intended for females.

We learned today in this chamber, when their parties blocked any hope of fixing the act in this parliament, that Mr Albanese and Mr Bandt support and encourage every single perverse outcome for women that this enables. When a dangerous male sex offender and a child rapist identifies into a women's prison, Anthony Albanese and Adam Bandt support that. When a 16-year-old girl takes to the rugby or football field and realises she will be up against adult males, Anthony Albanese and Adam Bandt support that. And when a woman is punished and dragged through the courts even for telling the truth—that a man is not a woman—Anthony Albanese, our Prime Minister, and the Australian Labor Party are the reason why.