Wednesday, 15 May 2024

Gender identity

Petition

Moira DEEMING (Western Metropolitan) (17:37): It is my pleasure to rise and also speak on petition 512 from my colleague Mrs McArthur. I just wanted to say also a big thankyou to the many, many people out there like – I was going to say Bev, but I am not allowed to call you that – my colleague Mrs McArthur. She and many others, like Mr Limbrick here, in the initial stages of this whole transgender affirmation ideology that is sweeping around the world – many of us just thought that it was a natural extension of the civil rights movements by the LGB communities. When it started to turn out that that was not the case, people like these two and many others had the courage to pause and raise the alarm, especially when it came to minors, especially when the evidence started stacking up and proving that transgender affirmation on minors is unethical. It has no proper evidentiary basis, it is harmful to them, and it needs to stop.

I will not add to the many wonderful points that these two have made, other than that it is an absolute atrocity that the loving instincts of parents, the safeguarding instincts of carers like teachers, the ethical standards of clinicians and the reasonable rights of MPs to stand on the Parliament House front steps and talk about women’s rights without being smeared as far-right Nazis – it is an absolute atrocity that all of this was done to divert attention from the fact that this has been a massive mistake. All of the resistance to this movement is based on genuine care, or at least the vast majority of it – there are probably bigots out there. I heard today what happened to you, Aiv. It is a disgraceful way that you have been treated – absolutely disgraceful. But you are not the only person who has been treated like that. I have been maligned and mistreated unfairly for things that I have never said and never believed. Everybody can go too far in these things. The Labor government, who I grew up with as part of that whole community – you have made a mistake, and children are getting hurt. We do not need an inquiry, Bev; it has already been done. We need to stop hurting these children. They cannot consent to losing their sexual function. They cannot consent to losing their fertility. The pipeline from school curriculums to these gender clinics needs to be abolished. We have to stop this political careerism, and we have got to look after children. Everyone cares about them, but the evidence is out. Trans affirmation of minors is unethical, and it needs to stop. We need to stop calling people transphobic who point out the inconsistencies in transgender ideology and the conflicts of interest between the ‘LGB’ and the ‘TQ+’.