ADJOURNMENT

Mr LLEW O'BRIEN (Wide Bay) (19:40): I commend my colleague the member for Lyne for bringing forward the Sex Discrimination Amendment (Sex-based Rights) Bill 2026 to reinstate the rights of women, which have been eroded since the amendment of the Sex Discrimination Act by the Gillard government in 2013. This bill seeks to restore the biological definition of the two genders, male and female, that were removed in 2013, to reinstate common sense and bring clarity to the law and to protect the rights of women to have settings reserved exclusively for their use while still retaining measures to prevent discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.

This bill does not remove rights. It reinstates them. It strengthens the definition of gender and gives women and girls their right to biological-female-only services, activities and spaces.

The 2013 amendments left biological women and girls vulnerable in situations where privacy and safety depend on a clear definition of male and female genders. As a consequence of those amendments, we now see biological males who identify as females given court sanctioned access to places and settings reasonably intended as sanctuaries for women and girls. These amendments and the recent Federal Court case Tickle v Giggle mean that women have no right to their own exclusive spaces, as men who identify as women can access them also.

Tickle v Giggle robs rights and protections for girls and women, sacrificing their privacy, dignity and safety to the ideology of gender identity. By treating sex as self-declared rather than biological, the court's interpretation has effectively stripped women of the right to say no in spaces built for their personal privacy and protection. When legislation fails to reflect reality and strips rights from one group to appease another, it must be amended.

This bill restores the rights of women and protects their privacy and safety in bathrooms, change rooms, refuges and sporting activities. The fallacy that a biological man can self-identify as a woman and have the legal right to access places, spaces and activities that are specifically designed for women and girls must be overturned. The life experience of women born and raised female is inherently different from those who were born and raised male.

Just because some women are comfortable with sharing these spaces with men who identify as women should not override the valid concerns of women and girls who do not consent to sharing these spaces. Women have spent centuries fighting for their rights. The suffragettes fought for equality and to emancipate women from the restrictive roles they had traditionally been relegated to.

The changes the Gillard government made in 2013 regressed the rights of women and created an artificial construct that men and women are interchangeable and biology plays no role in determining what it means to be female or male. Biological sex matters in relation to the privacy, safety and services that are directly for women and girls, and our laws must reflect this reality.

Inclusion is important, but it cannot and should not override the sex based protections afforded to women and girls. Women in the 21st century deserve the right to say no to the intrusion of non-biological females in their change rooms, in their sport, in their domestic violence shelters, in their rape crisis counselling centres and in any of their safe spaces.