Family First National Director and lead candidate for the NSW Legislative Council, Lyle Shelton, has reaffirmed the party’s longstanding commitment to repeal NSW’s gender self-identification laws, saying the latest figures exposing men “becoming women” prove Australians were misled during the same-sex marriage campaign.
New figures published by The Saturday Telegraph reveal that more than 1,000 males have legally changed their sex to female on NSW birth certificates since the Minns Government implemented Alex Greenwich’s Equality legislation last year.
That’s three men per day becoming “women with penises” and being legally allowed to enter girls’ and women’s private spaces.
The process requires only a statutory declaration, a supporting statement and a $73 fee.
“In debates with me during the 2017 same-sex marriage plebiscite, Alex Greenwich repeatedly assured Australians that redefining marriage had nothing to do with gender ideology or changing the legal meaning of sex,” Mr Shelton said.
“When we raised these concerns he said we were bringing ‘red herrings’ into a debate that was only about the love of two people.
“He and his supporters insisted that concerns about gender fluid ideology were nothing more than scare campaigns. We were told this would never happen.
“But we always knew the LGBTQA+ political movement had a broader agenda and the fact that Greenwich has driven this is proof.
“Today, more than a thousand males have been able to legally become ‘female’ by completing paperwork and paying a $73 fee. Eighty children have also applied to change the sex recorded on their birth certificates.
“This is exactly the type of social and legal revolution we warned would follow once objective definitions of marriage, sex and family were deconstructed.”
Mr Shelton said the consequences were now being felt across women’s sport, prisons, changerooms, refuges and other sex-based spaces where governments are increasingly struggling to reconcile biological reality with legal fiction.
“Even Corrective Services NSW has effectively admitted the problem by instructing prison authorities to disregard birth certificates and determine prisoners’ sex according to biological reality when making accommodation decisions.
“If birth certificates can no longer be trusted inside our prisons, why should they determine access to women’s sport, changing rooms or other female-only spaces?”
Mr Shelton said Family First had consistently opposed gender self-identification laws because they undermine the rights, privacy and safety of women and children while creating confusion throughout the legal system.
“If I am elected to the NSW Legislative Council next March, I will make it my life’s work to undo the harmful legislation Alex Greenwich has been instrumental in imposing on New South Wales.
“Family First will fight to restore biological reality to NSW law by abolishing gender self-identification and ensuring that legal sex once again reflects biological sex.
“Compassion for every individual should never require governments to deny objective reality or strip women and girls of the protections they deserve.
“The experiment with gender self-identification has failed. It is time to restore common sense.”
