A new bill before the Queensland Parliament proposes significant changes to birth, death and marriae registration—but it could come at the cost of women’s rights, child safeguarding, and freedom of association. The Women’s Action Alliance Canberra (WAAC), recently made a submission outlining our deep concerns about the bill’s impact.
What’s at stake?
The bill would allow people to change the sex on their legal documents by simple declaration (self-ID), without the need for significant safeguards. At the same time, it adds “sex characteristics” to the state’s Anti-Discrimination Act—removing legal clarity for single-sex spaces and services meant to protect vulnerable women and girls. This poses three key risks.
1. Female-only spaces and safety jeopardised
- The bill as drafted removes important protections for women and girls in shelters, change rooms, and crisis centres.
- By making it potentially unlawful to restrict these spaces based on sex at birth, the changes especially threaten women who rely on community-funded refuges, including religious and migrant communities that require female-only spaces.
- Our submission points out that trauma survivors may be re-triggered by the presence of male-bodied people, regardless of intentions.
- The UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls has warned that sex offenders will use any means to access victims, underlining the need for robust legal clarity.
2. Fast-tracking the medicalisation of children
- The bill would let children legally change sex, backed only by a “developmentally informed practitioner” whose role is — according to the notes — to support, not question the child’s transition.
- WAAC warns this “tick-the-box” approach ignores serious evidence that affirming social transition can push children toward irreversible and risky medical interventions (puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones).
- This is happening just as countries such as Finland, Sweden, and the UK are retreating from “affirmation-only” models due to evidence of harm.
3. Compromising women’s freedom to associate
- The addition of “sex characteristics” to anti-discrimination law potentially renders female-only groups and lesbian organisations unlawful.
- Women wanting to organise on the basis of sex—not gender identity—could be forced underground, impacting our safety, dignity and ability to campaign for our own rights.
- The bill threatens voluntary associations by removing discretion for sex-based membership, even as federal law preserves this right.
Real consultation, not tokenism, is needed
WAAC’s submission makes it clear: while everyone deserves protection from humiliation and discrimination, bills like this must not sacrifice the rights and safety of women and girls. We call for explicit legal “carve-outs” to ensure female-only services remain lawful and urge the Parliament not to add sex characteristics to the Anti-Discrimination Act.
Instead of embracing contested, ideological approaches to sex and gender, the Committee is urged to genuinely consult a wide range of women—not just advocacy groups aligned with the bill—and to learn from international evidence.
Conclusion
As we conclude to the Committee, “Future generations of Queenslanders and Australians depend on your wisdom and intellectual courage.” It’s time for Queensland to get this right—by ensuring evidence, lived experience, and genuine pluralism shape the law.
Read the full submission, below.
