Category: Australia

Cass Review, Giggle v Tickle: Media’s trans reporting blind spots | The Australian

[O]utlets such as The Age won’t report things its editors think might be supported by the political right, whatever the views of mainstream common sense Australians.

For example, apart from a piece by Michael Bachelard in November 2023, The Age has largely absented itself from debate about what Gender Clinic News (GCN) author Bernard Lane calls the greatest global medical scandal of our time.

And of course the most extreme approach to gender issues is in Victoria, where The Age sacked columnist Julie Szego over a trans piece. The Age’s loss has been The Australian’s gain, as with former Age editor Michael Gawenda, whose work on antisemitism runs in this masthead but seems strangely unwelcome in the paper he edited.

Social affairs and medical reporters should vigorously pursue concerns raised in the UK’s Cass Review into gender care that forced the closure of the Tavistock clinic in London in 2022.

The problem for public interest journalism is the blind eye much of the left media turns to the risk that bad medical decisions at an early can damage people physically and psychologically.

[Ed: In my experience, censorship at the SMH exceeds that at the Age. Szego’s story about a detransitioner commencing litigation was given large front page coverage in the Age, but only much reduced space on the SMH front page despite being a Sydney case. ]

Source: Cass Review, Giggle v Tickle: Media’s trans reporting blind spots | The Australian

Twenty-Five Years of Family Court Warnings – Janine Rees

Australia has spent more than two decades investigating the family law system. We have the evidence. The question is whether we have the courage to act and to pursue truth, accountability and repair.

[Ed: This article provides an excellent history of the multitudinous inquiries into the Family Court and the continuing failure to reform this malfunctioning jurisdiction that causes women and children so much misery.]

Source: (4) Twenty-Five Years of Family Court Warnings – Janine Rees

Child abuser who preyed on orphans housed at Christian Brothers property | Royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse | The Guardian

Christian Brothers properties have been used to house convicted child sexual abuse offenders, including one brother who preyed on orphans and another who was kept in teaching positions for almost three decades after senior officials became aware of his offending.

The Christian Brothers prompted fury from survivors last month when it declared it was about to go broke, and could no longer afford to meet their claims in court.

Last week, the Guardian revealed that the order had kept nine convicted child abusers as brothers within its order, arguing there was a “Gospel imperative” to “care for all Brothers” and “the needy”, according to court documents.

The documents also show the Christian Brothers’ constitution requires it to provide financial support to current brothers, including by covering housing costs, rates, electricity, gas and water bills, health insurance, reimbursement for medical, dental and physiotherapy, a “Community Living Allowance” of $1,200 per month, the provision of vehicles and associated costs, money for spiritual development, including retreats, as well as some food and entertainment expenses.

Source: Child abuser who preyed on orphans housed at Christian Brothers property | Royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse | The Guardian

The human cost of the Christian Brothers’ asset shifting | The Saturday Paper

Late on Monday, June 22, 2026, plaintiff law firms representing victims of institutional child sex crimes were invited to an urgent online meeting. At the meeting, the legal representatives of the Christian Brothers, Gilbert + Tobin, read out prepared statements. The information can be condensed into fairly simple language: the Christian Brothers had gone broke.

For how long did the Christian Brothers know they were “going broke” while continuing to settle claims in “good faith”?

The Christian Brothers exist in several forms. There is the unincorporated Congregation of the Christian Brothers (Oceania Province), a non-government organisation. They also exist in the form of a body corporate, the Trustees of the Christian Brothers, and multiple associated entities.

The trustees owned and managed all Christian Brothers schools until 2007, when they set up Edmund Rice Education Australia (EREA) for the purpose of owning, conducting and managing these educational facilities.

In January 2013, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was established by then prime minister Julia Gillard. A month later, EREA was incorporated as a body corporate with seven council members appointed by the Provincial of the Christian Brothers. The council members became the trustees of this newly formed EREA Trust.

A few months later still, the multiple entities of the Christian Brothers and EREA entered into a master agreement to transfer the Christian Brothers’ properties to EREA. This was for a peppercorn consideration. The Christian Brothers excluded a copy of this master agreement from the documents before the court.

The total property, land and equipment value of $2.5 billion was assessed at cost – that is, at book value. The true market value now is considerably higher.

So, the Christian Brothers tell us they have no money and EREA tell us they have nothing to do with the Christian Brothers. Divine magic.

At least 2500 children are estimated to have been raped and assaulted by Christian Brothers. These people have suffered for decades with drugs and alcohol, suicide attempts and shattered lives. That is, if they survived at all. Yet the Christian Brothers continue to treat them with contempt.

If Edmund Rice Education Australia looks, acts, sounds and smells like the Christian Brothers, it is the Christian Brothers – and the Christian Brothers must pay.

Source: The human cost of the Christian Brothers’ asset shifting | The Saturday Paper

Breaking: NT Children’s Commissioner walks away, ci… | National Indigenous Times

The Northern Territory’s Children’s Commissioner has resigned in a bombshell announcement, citing concerns about the Territory Government’s approach to governance, transparency and child protection reform.

Shahleena Musk — a Larrakia woman and former crown prosecutor — has been outspoken in her criticism of multiple Northern Territory governments’ policies on child protection and youth incarceration, citing the impact policies have on some of the most vulnerable children in the country.

On Thursday afternoon, she said the decision to resign had not been made lightly. Instead, she argued that it reflected a growing concern about the “current environment for independent oversight, evidence-based policy development and transparent decision-making in the Northern Territory”.

“In particular, I have been unable to support the Northern Territory Government’s approach to substantial and wide-reaching changes to child protection laws,” she said.

“In my view, reforms of this significance must be grounded in evidence, informed by those with frontline experience, and developed through genuine consultation with experts, independent institutions and frontline organisations established to protect children and promote accountability.

“I have been concerned by the effective sidelining of myself as the Children’s Commissioner in the development of these reforms. In taking on this role I swore an oath to fulfil the mandate, including all functions and responsibilities set out in the Children’s Commissioner Act 2013.

Source: Breaking: NT Children’s Commissioner walks away, ci… | National Indigenous Times

Petition EN10202 – Amend the Sex Discrimination Act – Parliament of Australia

Petition Reason

“The Sex Discrimination Act must clearly define ‘male’ and ‘female’ as biological sexes in order to provide legal certainty, consistency, and fairness in the application of sex-based rights, protections, data collection, sport, health care, privacy, and safeguarding laws. Clear definitions help ensure that legislation intended to protect women and men from discrimination can be applied consistently by courts, employers, schools, service providers, and government agencies, while reducing confusion, legal ambiguity, and conflict between competing rights and interests.”Petition Request

We therefore ask the House to introduce legislation to amend the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) to define ‘male’ and ‘female’ according to biological sex, and to ensure that sex-based rights, protections, and provisions are applied consistently across Commonwealth law.”

Source: e-petitions – Parliament of Australia

Female graduates are earning less than their male peers. What might be causing the gap? | The Conversation

The survey, run by the Australian National University’s Social Research Centre, looks at the job outcomes and starting salaries of fresh graduates four to six months after finishing their studies.

Results showed newly minted female undergraduates are starting their professional careers on a median full-time annual salary of $75,300, compared with their male colleagues on $79,000.

That’s a 4.7% gap, even before the impacts of family formation and caregiving have kicked in.

On top of this, women even start on lower salaries than their male counterparts in some female-concentrated industries such as nursing and teaching.

The gender pay gap among new university graduates is narrower than Australia’s workforce-wide gender pay gap of 11.5%. However, the workforce-wide gap has generally been shrinking over the past ten years. In contrast, the gender gap in graduates’ starting salaries shows no overall improvement, averaging 3.9% over the past decade.

This disparity can’t be blamed on women working part-time, as these comparisons are based on full-time salaries.

So can it be explained by gender differences in subject choices, with women choosing fields of study that lead to lower-paying professions?

It’s a fair question, given 2021 research shows hourly wage rates in female-concentrated occupations are 9.9% lower than in male-concentrated ones.

But the data suggest that, no, subject choice can’t completely explain the gap either.

Some within-field gaps reach as high as 8.6%, such as architecture and built environment. Law and paralegal studies recorded a gap of 7.2%, followed by science and mathematics with 6.8%.

The fields where women start on a higher financial footing than their male peers are generally lower-paid to begin with, such as communications and creative arts.

Psychology is the exception where women begin their careers on a median salary that exceeds men’s and is not among the lowest-paid.

All employers in Australia with 100 or more staff are legally required to report their gender pay gaps to WGEA. The agency encourages organisations to conduct a like-for-like analysis to look for differentials between staff at comparative levels.

This can include a comparison of the pay and project opportunities of men and women starting out at graduate level. This would help ensure newly graduated women step into the workforce on an equal footing to their male peers.

Source: Female graduates are earning less than their male peers. What might be causing the gap?

Julia Gillard claims it was a ‘different time’ | The Spectator Australia

Julia Gillard’s attempt to backpedal on gender laws is wild.

For those who missed it, Julia Gillard’s Labor government was responsible for controversial changes to the Australian Sex Discrimination Act in 2013 that effectively erased biology and replaced it with gender identity.

According to fragments of speeches made by the Coalition to the Australian Sex Discrimination Act, the 2010 Federal Liberal team apparently took a version of gender identity inclusion to the election as policy. Although, it must have been a very quiet bit of background footnoting because it’s hard to find any trace of it online today.

The meat of the point is that both parties wanted credit for the changes to gender identity at the time. They genuinely thought they did a good job. Transgender rights were riding a cultural high after the victories of gay and lesbian acceptance. It was good politics…

Gillard may no longer be in government, but both major parties have had several chances to fix earlier mistakes and, just last week, chose not to do so.

Ignorance can no longer be used as an excuse for the problem of trans activism interfering with sex protections, but what about in 2012-13? Was Gillard right?

Not really.

Women were making complaints about privacy and potential risk while transgender activist groups were putting legal pressure on colleges and businesses to accommodate their wishes.

There were certainly enough articles in the news and legal conflicts popping up to alert politicians in Australia of a problem with their legislation.

And they did not even have to go looking for it, because there was an excellent submission made to the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill (2012) by a professor at the University of Melbourne which spelled at the problem extremely clearly.

There are only two questions that matter in this debate:

Can a human being change their sex? Do we believe sex-based division in sports and private areas is valid?

The answer to the first question is obviously no. Your sex is decided at conception and nothing can change it.

Do we, as a society, believe in women’s sports? Do we want women’s bathrooms? Women’s clubs? etc

If the public answer is yes, then it is the duty of Parliament to change the law to reflect the voice of the people. As it stands, they outright refuse to do so. They are saying, by their actions, that transgender rights matter more than biological rights.

[Ed: Yes it was very much a bipartisan effort and passed in the lower house with the support of the coalition led by Tony Abbott who furthered the cause by his very public support of Cate McGregor on ABC’s Australian Story soon afterwards.]

Source: Julia Gillard claims it was a ‘different time’ | The Spectator Australia

Tackling medical misogyny in Australian healthcare | SMH

The federal government has not yet released the findings of the audit that was completed last year of more than 8000 curriculums at 123 institutions responsible for educating every accredited healthcare and allied health practitioner. The Health Department said the report was undergoing quality assurance checks, which have taken longer than expected to complete.

But Professor Bronwyn Graham, who led the audit, said the key issue was that too often students were not being told that the course content – presented as gender-neutral – was based on evidence developed using males.

“Male subjects, male presentations, risk factors and responses”, said Graham, director of the Centre for Sex and Gender Equity in Health and Medicine. “The assumption that students take away is this is just what we do for all patients.”

As a result, women’s pain is much more likely to be dismissed or denied, while men are more likely to be believed, Graham said.

Doctor and medical philosophy researcher Lea Merone has similar concerns. Her 2024 analysis of six textbooks recommended by Australian medical schools found all implied women and men had the same symptoms for the analysed diseases.

To fix the curriculums, Australia’s gold standard clinical guidelines – which cover everything from anaesthesia to lung cancer – needed updating, Graham said.

Meanwhile, work was finally under way to develop pelvic pain management guidelines, redressing a glaring oversight considering chronic pelvic pain affects up to one in four Australian women.

The decades-old mnemonics doctors and nurses were once taught to remember the 12 cranial nerves

Doctors:“Oh Oh Oh To Touch And Feel Virgin Girl’s Vagina And Hymen”

Nurses:“Oh Oh Oh To Touch And Feel Very Good Velvet, Ah Heaven”

Source: Tackling medical misogyny in Australian healthcare

A timeline of women’s rights: CEDAW, the 2013 amendments, and the loss of sex‑based protections – The Women’s Advocate

The Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) (the SDA) was enacted to give effect to Australia’s obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and to protect women as a sex class from discrimination in public and political life.

This timeline tracks changes to the SDA from its foundations in CEDAW through the expanding role of the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and the contested 2013 amendments that removed the biological definitions of ‘woman’ and ‘man’ and inserted gender identity into the Act.

Taken together, these developments show how a statute that originally gave “pre‑eminence to the rights of women” has come to be interpreted in ways that subordinate women’s sex‑based rights to claims based on gender identity. This is the reason women’s organisations are now calling for legislative reform to restore and clarify those protections and rights. A full list of source documents is at the end of the timeline.

Source: A timeline of women’s rights: CEDAW, the 2013 amendments, and the loss of sex‑based protections – The Women’s Advocate