Member for Lyne Alison Penfold was the only one to speak in support of her bill seeking to amend the Sex Discrimination Act on Monday.
The North Coast MP admitted during her speech that the debate would cease at the end of it, saying “like women under the Sex Discrimination Act, this bill is silenced at the end of my speech.”
Claiming that “millions of Australian women and men care” about the issue, Penfold argued that the amendments made in 2013 should be repealed because it makes some uncomfortable.
“What are normally articulate politicians now stumble with word salads to describe what a woman is.”
“A liberal democracy cannot function properly when ordinary people become afraid to speak plainly,” she said.
She made a number of absurdly false claims during the speech, including that “girls are forced to play with and against biological boys despite the threats to their physical safety” and “women’s prisons and domestic violence shelters must harbour the very perpetrators they fear” when no such requirement exists. She praised a long list of people widely condemned for their hateful views, including Senator Pauline Hanson, Tasmanian ex-Liberal Party member Louise Elliott, and two-time far right wing minor party candidate Kirralie Smith, bizarrely claiming that these politicians “did not seek fame”.
Penfold, who has repeatedly asserted that she was presenting the bill as a commitment to constituents and after lobbying from Smith, also said she was being “gracious” by “offering the Prime Minister” the option of a parliamentary committee instead of supporting her bill.
It is understood there is no support on either side of politics for such an inquiry, with one insider saying “the damage from such an inquiry would dwarf damage of the same sex marriage debate and set back gender equality – not just trans rights – decades”.
This sentiment was supported by Equality Australia Legal Director Heather Corkhill, who also said the bill would be damaging to women’s rights.
“Rather than improving women’s safety or equality, this culture war risks dragging LGBTIQ+ and women’s rights back to the dark ages.”
“This bill would give sexism and misogyny a free pass while stripping trans women of basic protections,” she said.
Corkhill was also critical of the legislation itself, which is problematic on many fronts.
“This bill is legally messy, socially divisive and risks weakening protections for all women,” she said.
“Sex discrimination has never been about biology alone — decades of case law make clear it is about gendered stereotypes, assumptions, and the unequal treatment of women and how they ‘should’ act and live.”
Throughout the speech, Penfold repeatedly seemed to mix up transgender people, who have changed their gender identity and generally fit within the male/female binary, and intersex people, who were born, and have always been biologically, neither female or male, and those who are gender fluid. She stated, as she did in her exclusive interview with North Coast Times, “there will inevitably be those who seek to falsely portray this bill as an attack on transgender Australians”, claiming her intent was solely to provide clarity in the law.
However the language of her bill, explanatory memoranda, and speech, made clear that the intended victim of her actions was intersex and gender fluid people, who she was redefining out of existence, or at best diminishing to an aberration that should be denied the right to their identity.
Specifically, as per the explanatory memoranda, the legislation “repeals the definition of intersex status and replaces it with references to differences in sexual development to make clear that intersex status does not create a third sex, but are variations within male or female categories.”
Dr Morgan Carpenter, bioethicist and Executive Director of Intersex Human Rights Australia (IHRA) said the legislation as put by Penfold would have significant impacts on this group of people.
“Proposals to enact definitions of biological sex can have an adverse effect on people with intersex variations.”
“Some people may find themselves involuntarily reclassified out of their birth-observed sex.”
The bill was seconded by Queensland LNP MP Llew O’Brien, but he did not seek to make a speech in support of it. No other member of parliament requested to speak to the bill.
National Party leader Matt Canavan, who introduced a similar failed bill in the Senate last year, joined Penfold and Sall Grover, the losing party in the Giggle v Tickle case, to speak on the issue to media after the bill was presented in the parliament.
Penfold and Canavan struggled to answer questions in the press conference, deferring to Grover who pointedly said that “men who claim to be women are not women” and described the debate as a “linguistic war”.
Canavan committed the Coalition to continue to pursue the issue despite the repeated defeats and lack of appetite for the debate, saying “I haven’t budged on many issues”.
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