AAWAA brings to you Local Action — interviews with women Getting It Done across Australia. In this edition of Local Action, we talk to Isla MacGregor. Isla has been fighting the good fight for human rights for decades. She was abruptly dragged into this new wave of feminist activism and brings to it a wealth of knowledge and experience in activism and media savvy. Without Isla leading the charge for women’s sex-based rights in Tasmania, Tasmanian women would be completely lost. She has been fighting the good fight and raising awareness in her state and throughout Australia and the world.
Isla has been Getting It Done!
I have been working on the women’s rights campaign since about 2012, when I was asked by a very good friend—a gay man—to help with a campaign opposing brothel laws that were being pushed by the Greens and Labor in Tasmania. So I began working on that campaign and invited Sheila Jeffreys to lobby members of parliament and various NGOs. The brothel laws were ultimately defeated.
Tasmania now has what some consider, while still very flawed, the best prostitution laws in the country. There is a restriction allowing only two women to sell sex from a single premise, and pimping is not allowed. There is very little police oversight of the sexual exploitation trade in Tasmania. I don’t believe there is much oversight by the Australian Federal Police in relation to trafficking in this state either. That campaign was my entry point into campaigning for the sex based rights and opposing sex self-ID laws.
Before that, my focus was solely on whistleblower advocacy and defending dissident voices. I started in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was deeply involved with the national body Whistleblowers Australia. I worked closely with them in the mid-1990s and represented Tasmania. I acted on behalf of several high-profile whistleblowers, including the case of the Special Operations Group of Tasmania Police shooting of Vietnam Veteran Joe Gilewicz in 1991, which led to a Commission of Inquiry (Royal Commission) in 2000. Directly following from the Commission of Inquiry and related to the investigations, working with Whistleblowers Tasmania I assisted in setting up, along with NAPCAN and child sex abuse survivors group SCARR, the Coalition for Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse – CICSA. We launched this group in August 2003 at a Press Conference attended by then Anti Discrimination Commissioner Jocelynne Scutt and Childrens Commissioner Patmalar Ambikapathy and a full room of journalists and public officials. We launched the group with Terms of Reference for a Commission of Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse which covered abuse in the Church, State Institutions and the Secret Volume of the Gilewicz Fourth Report. Only in 2021 was the Commission of Inquiry into the Tasmanian Government’s responses to child sexual abuse in institutional settings established with the final report released in 2023. But not into the Gilewicz Fourth Report.
Whistleblower advocacy was, in many ways, my training ground for women’s rights advocacy. The global campaign by women to defend our sex-based rights is, I believe, the largest mass act of whistleblowing the world has ever seen. It involves international collaboration to expose deeply corrupted processes in law, scientific fraud, major breaches of medical ethics, and grave risks to the safety and welfare of children and women, the erasure of lesbian rights—and impacts on the broader community. Not one section of the community has escaped unscathed from the social engineering project referred to as trans rights activism but better understood in reality to be a men’s rights movement.
I believe that sex self-ID laws have ushered in a deeply pernicious form of totalitarianism via government legislation. In the West, women now find ourselves under siege by our own governments—governments that have removed fundamental human rights: the right to political opinion, to peaceful assembly, to freedom of speech and to be heard, and to fair legal representation and procedures. We have been driven underground to form secret communities, ever wary of not even whispering in public, watching our backs in case we are recognised.
We really are living in dark times.
Since 2018, I’ve been working with Women Speak Tasmania to oppose Tasmanian sex self-ID laws. Initially, three women set up WST in order to oppose sex self-ID laws. The laws were snuck into a Liberal Government Bill tabled in Parliament in order to align with the result of the federal same-sex marriage referendum. The Bill was hijacked by the Greens and Labor, who used it to introduce sex self-ID laws.
It’s been a long and difficult campaign. We were active even before Women Speak Tasmania formally launched. Many women have come and gone—some because of career threats, others because the work is incredibly stressful and the constant attacks from what I call the “Trans Stasi” are too much to bear both at a personal level and for family.
We started the WST Facebook page in 2018. It’s not just an information page—it’s also a space for sharing writing, activism, outreach, and discussion. Over time, it’s become more interactive and has allowed us to connect with other community groups and has effectively encouraged people to take action. We’ve released numerous media statements over the years, and our outreach and presence on community noticeboards and local social media forums has been essential in raising awareness.
We have publicly opposed Family Planning Tasmania’s Growing Up Program being delivered to primary and secondary schools in Tasmania while denying parents the right to know what is in the program under the veil of commercial in confidence. Additionally, we have opposed the government funded program in schools by queer lobby group Working It Out which alarmingly provides ‘affirmative planning’ for gender distressed children. Over the years we have put out numerous media releases warning about the very real harms of ‘affirmative care’ as each new international report has been released or jurisdiction banned puberty blockers and cross sex hormones for minors. We have met with Tasmanian Health Ministers Jacquie Petrusma and Guy Barnett, and Barnett as Attorney General, to lobby them on the need to stop the Tasmanian Gender Service from harming children through ‘affirmative care’ and to repeal sex self-ID laws.
To date, Tasmania and Victoria seem to be more ideologically captured than the rest of Australia. The ideological capture here is systemic—especially in the media and entertainment sectors. We all know how deeply the ABC is influenced by ACON. We’ve made multiple complaints about biased and sometimes aggressive reporting, particularly by ABC’s Ryk Goddard and Leon Compton, Mercury Journalists Kenji Sato and David Killick (Killick’s nasty reportage on the 2023 Let Women Speak event in Hobart), and Editor of the Advocate/Examiner Anthony Haneveer who relishes hating on WST in his many pro trans/men’s rights Editorials.
One of our many complaints involved ABC’s Leon Compton’s 2023 appearance on The Drum, where he claimed that airing women’s rights perspectives could be harmful to trans people. We also met with the former editor of The Mercury, Craig Warhurst, who reiterated the fraud of ‘if we report your views it might hurt trans people’.
We have archived many articles on complaints about media bias on our website.
That Let Women Speak event was the most violent and aggressive attack on women speaking publicly that Tasmania or Australia has yet seen. Several women were assaulted. I was subjected to a minor assault with a man stomping on my foot. I was threatened with defamation by a former Justice Department official in front of a journalist who was quite taken aback by the viciousness of this woman. Others were spat on. With only one senior Tasmania Police Officer taking action to investigate one of the men in attendance who was spat on by a screaming TRA. Women couldn’t even be heard. Kellie Jay Keen asked me to speak up but I can’t shout. And if women aren’t heard, then freedom of speech is meaningless. Freedom of thought and speech underpin all other rights. Our rights have been erased, we have been erased.
I’ve given a lot of thought to how we grow our movement. For me, three principles are key:
- Responsibility
- Cooperation
- Organisation
We need to move beyond keyboard activism and into real-world engagement. We need to meet face-to-face with decision-makers—not only in government, but in local associations, parents’ groups, and community organisations. We need to be present, leave a paper trail and a record. Politicians and institutions will never be able to claim “Oh, but I didn’t know!”. In the future ignorance will never be a defence. We need to ramp up this phase of advocacy nationally—many women’s/other groups are increasingly doing just that.
Although we couldn’t enter schools, in a massive hands-on campaign we distributed hard copies of the Transgender Trend Schools’ Guidance to every school in Tasmania. A donor helped fund the printing. The Education Department responded by warning staff to ignore anything from us, which only confirmed we had hit a nerve. We’re now considering distributing the UK’s Sex Matters guidance too. Australia still lacks an up to date, independent, academically endorsed schools guidance resource.
Meanwhile, the men’s rights/trans/queer social engineering project has embedded itself in leadership positions across community groups, enabling policies to be introduced with little discussion or pushback for fear of retribution.
We’ve experienced numerous instances of no-platforming. I’ve personally been de-platformed four times since 2020. One incident involved the International Women’s League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). I was invited to speak on sex-based rights, but Robin Banks—previously Anti Discrimination Commissioner and architect of the sex self-ID laws—wrote a letter calling us a hate group and warning the organisation that hosting us would damage its reputation. That letter was leaked and published in The Australian, which was a huge national embarrassment for her.
The irony is stark. Banks contrived laws supposedly to protect gender-diverse people from discrimination and stigma—and then used those very laws to stigmatise, silence, harass and defame women. That’s victimisation and harassment—clear violations of anti-discrimination law by the former Anti Discrimination Commissioner Robin Banks.
Another time, we tried to hold a meeting at Friend’s Meeting House. Two staff members working for Labor and Greens politicians contacted the Friends school to warn them that if they allowed WST to use the meeting room, they would ensure damage to the reputation of the school and that enrolments would suffer.
We were also banned from Burnie Library, Devonport Library, and The Hive (NW Council venue), where we had planned to present evidence on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and the Cass Review, as well as the impact of self-ID laws on women and LGB people. Our evidence is contained in this comprehensive Dossier on the Impacts of Sex-Based Rights which we presented to the Tasmanian Attorney General Guy Barnett on 20 January 2025.
We appealed WST forum bans at Burnie and Devonport Libraries to the Anti-Discrimination Commission on the grounds of discrimination on WST’s political opinion. When the events were cancelled, we released public statements. The community reaction—especially in the northwest—was overwhelmingly supportive with many expressing disgust at the cancellations. Of course, the Trans Stasi responded with accusations of hate speech, which is exactly what deters public participation in the debate. Fear of being labelled hateful or bigoted stops people from speaking out. The Anti Discrimination Commission dismissed our complaints which are now subject to further action.
We eventually found support to hold the WST forum from the Devonport RSL, which stood its ground and allowed us to meet. It is incredibly significant that a Veteran’s Charity stood up for freedom of speech and democratic rights. I don’t know of another private venue in Australia that has stood by a women’s organisation holding a public event to discuss the extensive harms of sex self-ID laws and the need for their repeal. We issued a statement, but the media ignored it. Still, we considered it a major win. Hats off to the Devonport RSL!!!
WST’s new director, Dr Elizabeth Caballero, is a retired medical doctor with young children, and her tireless work and networking have made a huge difference to moving WST’s agenda forward. Especially through our comprehensive website. With the assistance of two very dedicated internet experts we have a magnificent and very comprehensive site which is the archive of our work since 2012 but especially since 2018, we call our site the WST Accountability Project.
We’re also lucky to have many other brilliant women and men involved—some of whom I can’t name for privacy and safety reasons. Tasmanian Senator Claire Chandler, Hobart City Councillor Louise Elliott, Burnie City Cr Trent Aitken, former Hobart Councillor Jeff Briscoe, remain outstanding advocates for women’s and children’s rights and repeal of sex self ID laws in Tasmania.
It is always a constant challenge to keep up with the rate of international and national medico/legal developments in order to inform our campaign. We are indebted to the tireless work of independent investigative journalist Bernard Lane who keeps many individuals and organisations globally up to date with latest news updates.
National networking has always been an intrinsic part of my work and I am indebted to the many women and men who continue to be constructive colleagues, many times whom I have leaned on for advice, debriefing and shared laughter.
During the recent state election we released a media statement naming Dr Julie Sladden and Dr Rachel Bradley as two of the signatories to the open letter to medical organisations published in The Australian in May 2025. The Open Letter, signed by over 100 clinicians, called on professional bodies and regulators to acknowledge and respond to recent international and local events in the field of youth gender medicine. Dr Sladden ran as a candidate for the Liberal Party in the May state election, though women’s sex based rights was not part of her platform – as expected. Independent Candidate Phillip Bigg and all Candidates with the Shooters Fishers and Farmers Party (SFFP) supported the Women’s Pledge Australia. Carlo DiFalco (SFFP) won a seat in Lyons and Women Speak Tasmania briefed Carlo at a planning meeting on 10 August, 2025.
In Tasmanian schools there’s a program called the Affirmation Planning Program run by Working It Out. It trains school staff to identify “gender diverse” children and create affirmation plans, often without parental involvement. This is funded by $1.1 million in state grants. It’s incredibly invasive, and few people know about it. An anonymous blogger and teacher “B..” has exposed both what is happening in schools and at the Tasmanian Gender Service.
Some of “B..’s” blog was included in a Sky News segment in July with Lee Hanson from One Nation following from Pauline Hanson raising the issue in the Federal Parliament after Lee Hanson’s son came home from school with some dubious questions about “where is your penis Mum?”
This mental harming of school children is going to lead to major malpractice lawsuits in the future.
The media—especially the ABC and The Mercury—are culpable. They’ve suppressed information that could have prevented harm to children, girls, women, and LGB people. The social costs are devastating. Families are being torn apart. In our organisation we have trans widows, desisters, detransitioners, and mothers whose children are struggling with gender dysphoria. Some have lost their children and grand children completely simply for not conforming to gender ideology.
To the parents who’ve lost children to this ideology, whether by becoming trans or just cult followers: I see your pain, grief, your rage, and the constraints you’re under. Many are coerced into going along with it under threat of suicide. Some manage to support their children in other ways, but many have simply lost them.
It’s a fragile cult that is dissembling globally. Dr Dianna Kenny has called gender ideology a mass psychosis. I’ve often described the reaction from TRAs to our work as hysterical. Just look at the response from the Let Women Speak events around the world. The same violent responses we know to expect from violent and oppressive males who wish to perpetuate the subordination of women and children to male entitlement.
We will overcome this assault on women’s and children’s rights, but, it will take more people to step up to:
Responsibility
Cooperation
Organisation
WST look forward to AAWAA taking on the role as the peak body for the alliance of Women’s Advocacy groups in Australia as AAWAA has repeatedly shown its capacity for all of the above.
The views expressed by the women interviewed in Local Action are their own and do not necessarily represent or reflect the positions of AAWAA.
