Scott Morrison BACKS push to ban transgender women from playing female sport in Australia

Scott Morrison has backed a new push to prevent transgender women who were born male from playing female sport.

The Prime Minister has thrown his support behind Liberal senator Claire Chandler’s proposed law to prevent women’s clubs from being sued for excluding a trans player to reduce the risk of injury and unfair competition.

‘I support it, I think it is a terrific bill and I’ve given her great encouragement,’ he said alongside the Tasmanian senator in Trianbunna on Tuesday.

‘Claire is a champion for women’s sport and I think she has been right to raise these issues in the way that she has.’

Senator Chandler has raised concerns about transgender participation, especially in contact sports where the risk of injury is higher, since entering Parliament in 2019.

‘Women’s sport was invented for people of the female sex and any suggestion that it is somewhat provocative or controversial to articulate this view I think is pretty ludicrous,’ she told Daily Mail Australia in an interview in 2020.

In 2019 Sport Australia had issued pro-trans guidelines recommending that 16,000 sport clubs across the nation catagorise sport based on ‘gender identity’ not biological sex, meaning a person can chose whether to play men’s or women’s sport.

Senator Chandler, who received ‘hundreds and hundreds’ of emails and phone calls from parents concerned that girls’ sport was being undermined, said the guidelines ‘prioritise transgender inclusion over the health and safety of women’.

Her proposal – dubbed the Save Women’s Sport Bill – would amend the Sex Discrimination Act to specify that ‘offering single-sex sport is lawful’.

Pictured: Hannah Mouncey (right) played women’s Aussie rules after transitioning

When she introduced her bill earlier this month, Senator Chandler said: ‘Australia’s Sex Discrimination Act 1984 has always acknowledged that sex is relevant in sport, but under recent interpretations has unacceptably limited the circumstances in which single-sex sport can be offered. 

‘As a result, sports clubs, associations and volunteers are threatened with legal action if they exclude males from women’s sport.’

Equality Australia has rejected the bill as ‘divisive and unnecessary’.  

The inclusion of transgender athletes in elite women’s sport has been intensely disputed in recent years.  

Transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, who transitioned in her 30s, sparked controversy when she won a gold medal for New Zealand in women’s events at the Pacific Games in Samoa in July 2019.

She then won two gold medals at the Roma World Cup in January 2020.

Broadcaster Piers Morgan said ‘women’s rights to equality and fairness were being slaughtered at the alter of political correctness’.  

Former Australian Olympic middle-distance runner Tamsyn Lewis told Sydney radio station 2GB in March 2020: ‘There’s been a lot of people who are scared to come out and say anything because of political correctness. 

Transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard (pictured) sparked controversy when she won a gold medal for New Zealand in women’s events at the Pacific Games in Samoa in July 2019

‘You don’t want to get to the point where we haven’t tackled this issue head on and in a respectful manner, that in 20 years time we’re seeing our kids grow up and compete in sports that they just actually can’t win,’ she said.   

In 2018 Australian women’s handball player Hannah Mouncey, a trans woman who is 1.88metres tall and weighs 100kg, withdrew her nomination from the draft for the Australian Football League’s professional women’s competition.

She said the toll of trying to meet the AFL’s standard – which demands that players can prove that their testosterone levels have been maintained below a threshold for at least two years – had proved ‘too great’.