Lyle Shelton
National Director, Family First Party
"There is no evidence that trans women are harming other women in toilets or change rooms." — Anna Cody, Sex Discrimination Commissioner
Anna Cody's assertion in today’s The Australian is as reckless as it is naïve.
While Ms Cody claims there is "no evidence" that biological males identifying as women pose risks to females in female-only spaces, women in Australian prisons have already paid the price for this ideology.
In South Australia, multiple allegations have emerged involving violent male prisoner Krista Richards being housed in women's prisons. The case became a national scandal after reports that female inmates had allegedly been sexually assaulted and intimidated after authorities prioritised gender identity ideology over women's safety. Family First has repeatedly called on the Malinauskas Government to remove biological males from women's prisons and protect vulnerable female inmates.
In Victoria, the Allan Government was forced into damage control after a biological male prisoner who identified as a woman sexually assaulted a female inmate after being transferred into a women's prison. The victim reportedly received a secret compensation payout while the government quietly rewrote prison placement policies after the scandal became public.
These are not hypothetical concerns.
These are real women harmed by real men who should never have been placed in female facilities.
Ms Cody's comments demonstrate the danger of ideology replacing common sense.
If biological males can harm women in prisons, where women are a captive population unable to leave, it is entirely reasonable for women and girls to be concerned about the erosion of sex-based protections in other female-only spaces.
Family First rejects the increasingly common claim that a man becomes a woman simply by declaring it.
Women and girls deserve privacy, dignity and safety.
Even more concerning is Ms Cody's promotion of the notion that sex is merely an identity rather than a biological reality.
This ideology has already contributed to thousands of vulnerable children being encouraged to question their sex, leading many onto pathways involving puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and irreversible surgeries. Around the world, governments and medical authorities are retreating from these practices as the evidence of harm mounts.
The Australian Human Rights Commission has become one of the nation's most powerful promoters of gender ideology while increasingly ignoring the rights and concerns of women.
Family First therefore reiterates its policy to abolish the Australian Human Rights Commission and the highly paid bureaucracy that sustains it. Anna Cody is on $400,000+ in her role as Sex Discrimination Commissioner.
Australians should be asking why taxpayers fund a Human Rights Commission that spends so much time advancing radical gender ideology while failing to defend the rights of women and girls.
Ms Cody correctly notes that 22 women and children have allegedly died this year as a result of gendered violence.
She is right that violence against women deserves national attention.
But protecting women from violence also means preventing biological males from being placed in women's prisons, women's sport, women's change rooms, women's shelters and other female-only spaces.
Women's rights are not protected by pretending biological sex does not exist.
Family First will continue fighting for laws that recognise biological reality, protect women and children, and restore common sense to public policy.
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