Wednesday, 1 May 2024

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (17:30): (858) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Health, and the action I seek is for the minister to encourage all Victorian health services to acknowledge that sex is a biological fact. ‘Sex is biological fact, NHS declares’ – the headline of yesterday’s UK Daily Telegraph was a landmark shift. In changes to the UK’s National Health Service constitution women will regain the right to choose female-only wards and to request a doctor of their sex for intimate care. These changes will protect biological women for the first time. This is a historic victory for women, sex-based rights and common sense.

We have been fighting a global cultural war for many years. Health services have been captured by left-wing zealots and gender ideologues who refuse to acknowledge the scientific fact we are born either male or female. In some places this has included desexing language to avoid offence – contorting language, to be honest. The word ‘women’ has been scrubbed from female-only conditions like ovarian cancer and even menopause, and terms like ‘chest feeding’ and ‘birthing person’ have been adopted.

More insidious has been the change in hospital procedures, where trans-identified patients have been able to insist on treatment in single-sex wards of their choice. This goes to the heart of what I have always said in this debate: I am happy for individuals to dress, to act, to say whatever they want, up until the point it impacts upon the rights of others, and it is the right of women to be treated in a single-sex environment, as it is their right to play women-only sport or to find safety in women-only refuges and prisons – and I am pleased the minister is in the chamber at the moment.

It impinges upon the rights of others for trans-identified patients to insist on treatment in single-sex hospital wards where others do not share their sex, and it impinges upon the rights of others to insist they deny biological reality by using language and affirming statements with which they fundamentally disagree. That is not to say we should not be polite if we wish, but we cannot be forced to deny scientific reality just to placate the feelings of others. So I welcome this change – this progressive change. Let us reclaim the language too while we are about it. Progress cannot mean blindly charging forward and ignoring the cost and consequences. If we get it wrong, it is more progressive to admit it. So we must now acknowledge – re-acknowledge – that sex is a biological fact. Minister, going back is the progressive way forward.