The NSW parliament has dealt with independent Alex Greenwich’s massive Equality Bill by passing only a small part of it. The bill has now passed both houses. Mike Southon, Executive Director of the Freedom For Faith legal thinktank, has provided this update:
“The good news is that the vast majority of the Bill has been removed. This includes:
• All changes to the anti-discrimination act that would have stopped faith organisations and schools from requiring staff to live according to their faith in matters of sexuality and gender.
• Provisions allowing children to bypass their parents to get medical treatment – including puberty blockers.
• Changes to definitions of sex and sexuality throughout the law
• Elevating prostitution to a “protected category” in discrimination law
• Most of the changes to prostitution laws.
“Some controversial issues remain in the Bill. The most significant is the “sex self-ID” section, which allows a person to change their sex on their birth certificate.
“However, even this part of the Bill has been improved from its initial version:
• The age to be able to make a change easily has been raised from 16 to 18
•The process for under-18s has been made more rigorous – it is harder to bypass parents, requires support from a qualified counsellor, and requires the District Court to make the final ruling.
Most significantly, the Bill now states: “Nothing in this part changes access to toilets, change rooms, sport, allocation in correctional facilities, women’s refuges or any other place.”
“Time will tell how effective these protections are.
Religious institutions and faith-based schools will still be able to treat people according to their biological sex, because the exemptions to the Anti-Discrimination Act still remain. ”
In other news, an abortion bill imposing a cut-off of 27 weeks and six days has been narrowly defeated in the SA Upper House. The private members bill was proposed by Ben Hood, a conservative member of the Liberal Party, and failed by a single vote of 10–9. The bill provided that a mother seeking an abortion after the cut-off would have the baby induced and, if the mother chose, put up for adoption. Both Liberal and Labor members split their votes over the bill.
Clarification: Details of the bill’s progress through the houses were added, and the headline was changed to reflect that.