The Western Australian Parliament’s Births, Deaths, and Marriages Amendment (Sex or Gender changes) Bill 2024, introduced by the WA Attorney General, the Hon John Quigley MP, seeks to amend two different laws in Western Australia and would allow people to change their legal sex — multiple times. The effects of this would be 1) to provide a ‘presumption of inclusion,’ allowing males to self-identify as females and thus access protections and rights previously granted solely to women and girls, and 2) to provide a pathway for children to consent to unproven medical interventions – such as the use of puberty blockers and opposite-sex hormone treatments for the treatment of gender dysphoria — that may also lead to life-long further medicalisation through unnecessary surgeries.
No public committee review or public consultation
Despite the potential for the bill, if passed and enacted, to impact significantly on women and girls, no public consultation has been entered into, and the bill has not been sent to committee for review; indeed, a proposal to send the bill to review by the Hon Mia Jane Davies — Member of the Legislative Assembly and Shadow Minister for Women’s Interests — was voted down 47 to 5. Ms Davies explained repeatedly to the WA Parliament that not enough time had been given by the government to the opposition to fully read the bill and give it the consideration it deserves. She argued that there can be no down side to sending the bill to committee and that she would like “to give the government the opportunity to make sure the bill is absolutely right.” Ms Davies’ proposal was then voted down, with members voting along party lines.
The compressed timeframes for the introduction of the bill and the consideration of reading speeches in the Legislative Assembly are also cause for concern, and we believe this violates the human rights of all citizens of WA to freedom to “seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds” (art 19 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights). It also breaches women’s rights to participate in public affairs (art 25 ICCPR, art 7 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women).
The lack of committee process is also at odds with best practice internationally as well as that of other jurisdictions in Australia. In 2022 the Queensland Parliament introduced a bill to allow sex-self ID. Following public concern, Parliament referred the bill to a committee. The committee invited the public to make written submissions, receiving 385 which it published online. It also held public hearings. Even so, the development of the Queensland bill fell short of best practice. The Queensland Law Society commented that, “It is in all our best interests to ensure proposed laws work as effectively and efficiently as possible, and this requires meaningful and robust consultations with stakeholders. Short consultations held during the Christmas and new year shutdown will not yield the best legislation”. A dissenting committee member also noted the Government had begun closed consultations with LGBT groups in 2018 but engaged women’s groups only in 2022 and then only in response to public pressure with one information session rather than actual consultation: “The development of this Bill could have benefited immeasurably by being conducted in a transparent, respectful and consultative manner with the whole community over an extended period of time.”
Even more recently, the New South Wales Equality Legislation Amendment (LGBTIQA+) Bill 2023 was referred to the Committee on Community Services to conduct an inquiry; however, the process was undemocratic, exclusionary, and extremely flawed: only selected ‘stakeholders’ were invited to make submissions, and a majority of those stakeholders represented only one side of the debate on matters that affect women and girls. All others had to make their concerns known through an online survey, which provided only for likert-scale-type responses and did not allow for prose-based answers.
Despite problems with the above processes, at least the bills in these cases were sent for review: the same must happen in the Western Australian case.
The impact of the bill itself
If enacted, the bill will remove essential safeguards for women and girls and will fail to protect us where we are vulnerable because of our sex. This ‘presumption of inclusion,’ based on sex self-ID, includes but is not limited to:
Women in need of crisis support. If enacted, this bill will eliminate female-only crisis care, critical for trauma-sensitive support. Underfunded crisis shelters that rely on public funding already struggle to exclude men from their facilities, hindering their capacity to support women escaping male violence.
Prisons. If enacted, this bill will further entrench the ‘right’ of male-bodied people to be considered for accommodation in women’s prisons. Australia has previously assured the UN CEDAW Committee that Australia accommodates female and male prisoners separately to provide “a measure of protection against gender-based violence,” (See Australian Government, March 2018, List of issues and questions in relation to the eighth periodic report of Australia, para 138.). But this is not true.
Health facilities and care. Under this bill and its presumption of inclusion via sex self-ID, males who express a female identity will be permitted to access female-only health facilities such as female-only hospital wards, impacting women’s safety, privacy, and dignity. De-sexed language — which is already normalised in WA — will result in confused messaging, with serious implications for the sex-specific health care of women and girls. This messaging that can be especially confusing for migrant and refugee women, and arguably amounts to indirect discrimination. Furthermore, blurred lines between biological sex and gender identity have led to serious medical errors, jeopardising the clinical standards of health professionals.
Sport. This bill makes female-only sporting activities difficult and exposes women and girls to risks to safety from larger, stronger, faster males. And despite existing exclusions in this area under federal sex discrimination legislation, female-only sporting categories have already been widely compromised — and, indeed, change rooms and toilets (impacting privacy and dignity) — in WA.
Lesbians. Lesbians will no longer be able to exclude from their events people born male but who identify as lesbian, impacting both their dignity and safety. Lesbians are already subject to harassment from activists and are compelled to go underground to celebrate lesbian culture and meet other same-sex attracted women.
The bill was introduced to the WA Legislative Assembly on 17 April, with reading speeches conducted on 8 and 9 May 2024 and amendments adopted on 9 May 2024, with the bill being referred that same day to the Legislative Council (the state’s house of review). The second reading speech has already been agreed to by the Legislative Council (9 May) and as at time of writing it appears that the the debate could re-commence as early as Tuesday, 28 May, although we have also heard that the bill might not be considered until the end of June.
Affiliation of Australian Women's Action Alliances 