The Legislative Council will decide whether Tasmania becomes the first state to remove gender from birth certificates.
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The fallout from approved amendments to the Births, Deaths, and Marriages Registration Act, which would change the way gender was recorded on birth certificates continued on Wednesday, attracting the attention of Prime Minister Scott Morrison who called the move “ridiculous”.
House of Assembly Speaker Sue Hickey, who crossed the floor 11 times on Tuesday night to vote with the opposition parties, said the PM was wrong and stood by her decision which would further strain her relationship with Attorney-General Elise Archer and colleagues.
She said Mr Morrison needed to do his homework.
“He hasn’t read the legislation, he doesn’t understand that for 98 per cent of people nothing has changed,” she said.
“He should be embarrassed by his comments.”
It is not certain whether the upper house will support the legislation, amend it or refer it to a committee for an inquiry but Ms Hickey was hopeful.
“If they read the Hansard, it was a very compelling debate but it has been misunderstood in the community,” she said.
The bill before the house was intended to deal with same-sex marriage legislation and the government has accused the Labor and Greens parties for hijacking it to pursue another issue.
MALE FROM THE START
Greens leader Cassy O’Connor had a very personal interest in the changes.
Her 20-year-old son Jasper was born a girl.
Ms O’Connor said she had always known that Jasper Lees, her third-born child, was not “the sweet little girl that I thought I gave birth to”.
“As soon as Jasper could communicate, he made it very clear to us that he would not be wearing dresses, he would not be wearing fancy girlie things,” she said.
“He would run away when I came at what I thought was my first-born daughter with a dress.”
Ms O’Connor said she admired her son’s courage when he changed his name and decided people could accept him for who he was.
Jasper said he remembered as a young girl not really understanding why he wasn’t a boy.
As a teenager he said transgender people were rarely talked about and he was just accepted as a “masculine girl”.
“It took a few years in my adolescence to understand and learn the language around what I was feeling,” Mr Lees said.
The journalism student has had chest reconstruction surgery, but said other surgery will have to wait because it is extremely expensive and relatively dangerous.
Ms O’Connor said Jasper still faced challenges and struggles, but when he identified as a man it changed his life.
“His true character emerged. It was a joy, as a parent, to see Jasper happy,” she said.
SAFE AND EASIER
When Dana Endelmanis reached puberty she knew something was not right. The then-Latrobe teenager said that is when her dysphoria really started to affect her life.
“The feeling of relief from years of anxiety when I first started hormone replacement therapy (HRT) was incredible,” Ms Endelmanis said.
“The hardest thing about growing up in a small community was the feeling that I had to lie about who I am.
“At times, I genuinely thought I was the only person who felt the way I did.”
She moved to Hobart to attend university and organisations including Working it Out, the UTAS Women's Collective and headspace helped find her new direction.
“My family have supported me ever since I came out to them,” she said.
“I think, like a lot of parents Dana – when I changed my name I decided I wanted to be named after my mother – and Stephen felt they’d lost a son, but gained a daughter.
“It wasn't a problem for them and my two sisters were supportive from the beginning.”
Ms Endelmanis is confident the Legislative Council will support the changes.
“For all the rhetoric in Parliament, the evidence shows they are best practice and good law reform,”she said.
“Tasmanians aren’t afraid to be ahead of the curve. We have the best anti-discrimination laws in Australia.”
She said it was important to remember that the changes “won’t make any difference to the vast majority of Tasmanians”.
“But for those of us who have been confronted, harassed or persecuted for carrying ID, which doesn't reflect who we are it will make our lives safer and easier overnight,” Ms Endelmanis said.
“I think everyone should support that.”
CULTURALLY DESTRUCTIVE
Tasmanian Liberal senator Eric Abetz described the changes as “culturally destructive”.
He said the real issue was for Labor leader Bill Shorten to make federal Labor’s position clear on “deliberately and divisively removing the sex of children from birth certificates and official documents whilst also allowing people to change their designation by a simple statutory declaration”.
Labor senator Carol Brown said the federal wing of the Labor Party had no plans to change the way birth certificates were filled out.
“This is a matter for state Labor, but importantly these changes will not result in gender being removed from birth certificates against the will of anyone, nor will they impact on government data collection capabilities,” she said.
Leader of Government Business Michael Ferguson said Labor and the Greens had not taken their amendments to the Tasmanian community.
“I think Tasmanian parents would be disgusted that the Labor and Greens parties are doing social experiments on their kids and taking their sex off their certificates,” he said.
WHAT THE AMENDMENTS MEAN:
- Parents opt in to have gender marked on their child’s birth certificate;
- Parents can apply to the registrar to change the gender marker on their child’s birth certificate if the child is under 16;
- People aged over 16 can change or remove a gender marker on their birth certificate through a new gender affirmation declaration;
- There will no longer be a requirement for gender reassignment surgery for someone to have their gender changed on their birth certificate;
- A record of a person’s change or name and gender will still be recorded, regardless of whether it appears on a birth certificate;
- The age at which a person can change their name has been lowered from 18 years old to 16;
- Parents of intersex children now have 120 days to register their child’s birth instead of 60 days;
- Transgender people will not be forced to divorce as is the case under current marriage legislation and;
- Strengthened laws which would prohibit discrimination against a person based on expression of gender.
GOVERNMENT RESPONSE:
Ms Archer said the amendments included in the government’s bill have terms that are hard to interpret or are without legal precedent which have implications for courts, administrators and statutory officers who need to apply them.
She said the amendments used “sex” and “gender” interchangeably when they were two different things.
Ms Archer said the rights of parents and children would shift if the bill won final approval, particularly through the provision which allowed a child to change its name without parental consent.
“The courts have also had a considerable legal protection removed from them when considering applications from those under the age of 16, in that they will no longer be able to consider what is in the best interests of the child,” she said.
She criticised the amendment which allowed a person to change gender without reconstructive surgery.
“The change of sex without surgery provision is done in such a way that there is no validation, be it as little as a statutory declaration from a medical professional to verify that an individual lives as a particular sex,” Ms Archer said.
She said the amendments had “serious repercussions” and the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute needed to review them.