Category: Australia

Parents at odds over child’s trans therapy | The Australian

A parent hoping to block their transgender child from taking cross-sex hormones to become a boy says they accept the child’s gender dysphoria but don’t believe the underlying reasons were properly assessed.
Lawyers for the parent, referred to as Parent B, cited family dysfunction, adverse child experience, and internalised homophobia as other explanations for gender dysphoria.
But the child’s other parent, referred to as Parent A, who supported the prescription of testosterone, told the Federal and Family Court that Parent B was too “fixated on the why”.
The proceedings are governed by strict suppression orders preventing The Australian from printing key details about the family.
Barrister Belle Lane, leading Parent B’s legal team, argued the gender clinic should have “slowed down” the process from first appointment to gender dysphoria diagnosis and had issue with the fact the diagnosis and informed consent assessment took place over just two appointments. The court heard the time between the child coming out and being diagnosed with gender dysphoria was two years and eight months.
Parent B, wants their child to wait the 17 months until they turn 18, in order “to develop his own sexuality and idea of himself before it is impacted irreversibly”, the court heard, due to side-effects such as vaginal atrophy, sexual dysfunction, pelvic floor dysfunction, and infertility.

Source: Parents at odds over child’s trans therapy

Friday essay: public ‘pash ons’ and angry dads – personal politics started with consciousness-raising feminists. Now, everyone’s doing it

Personal activism has achieved major legislative change, such as no-fault divorce and the decriminalisation of homosexuality and abortion. But it’s also used by groups who want to reverse that change.

Thanks to “personal politics”, the everyday lives of Australians have been transformed in areas like no-fault divorce, providing safe abortions, decriminalising homosexuality, and introducing health and welfare programs tailored to women and LGBTIQ+ people.

Political change continues to be driven by personal stories.

Family Court violence

Men’s and fathers’ rights groups emerged in the lead-up to the 1975 Family Law Act and have continued to push back against feminist-led reforms to family life since.

Groups such as the Divorce Law Reform Association emerged in the late 1960s, sharing stories of distressed fathers who were required, by law, to support their divorced spouses and children.

After the Family Law Act passed, a rather angry masculinist activism argued for the “return of the fault factor”. The association’s president threateningly predicted “violence” if these male “victims” of oppression did not have their grievances recognised.

The Lone Fathers’ Association circulated stories of men who “considered kidnapping, even suicide” because of delays in the Family Court and a sense they were not being given a “fair go”.

Such groups argued the Family Law Act had turned divorced fathers into wage-slaves because they were required to provide child support, even if they had very limited custody.

No-fault divorce, the Divorce Law Reform Association argued, was making it “too easy” for women to leave marriages. At a Senate inquiry in 1980, it argued legal determinations of fault were required to “preserve the benefits, worth, stability and integrity of marriage” and prevent an ocean of male distress that was unfolding without it. A father was, and should remain, “the head of his own house”, the association argued.

In the early 1980s, the Family Court, its judges and their families became the target of lethal violence. Between 1980 and 1985, a series of bombings and shootings resulted in the death of one Family Court judge and another judge’s wife. They also resulted in the serious injury of Family Court judges. In 1984, the Family Court in Parramatta was bombed, though in this case no one was injured.

The “cause” of this violence, whether directed towards judges or families, was widely represented as a Family Court system that did not attend to men’s needs. As feminist scholar Therese Taylor observes, these activists had managed to turn “murder into the final proof of paternal love”.

From the mid-1990s, “men’s sheds” proliferated across Australia, and from 2010, they began to receive Commonwealth funding. There are now at least 1,250 of them (with access usually restricted to men). They promise to address isolation, poor mental health and suicide among (particularly older) men by providing “traditional” male activities and social contact.

In 2010, Men’s Sheds were awarded Commonwealth funding to support their expansion across Australia. In 2020, their funding was increased. A recent report commissioned by the Commonwealth government found most sheds reported being “well-funded and well-resourced”.

Source: Friday essay: public ‘pash ons’ and angry dads – personal politics started with consciousness-raising feminists. Now, everyone’s doing it

Why we need different injury prevention strategies in women’s sport

Female Australian football players at the sub-elite level experience different injury patterns to their male counterparts, according to new research from the University of South Australia.

Much like elite AFLW athletes, the data shows that South Australian National Football League Women’s (SANFLW) athletes are at greater risk for concussion and ACLs than male athletes in the AFL.

The findings, published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, highlight a need for targeted training, injury prevention strategies and potential match regulation changes.

Nationally and internationally, female sport often has less funding to implement injury prevention strategies.

Contact time between players is also a factor, as the research shows 75 per cent of injuries in SANFLW players resulted due to contact between players. Female Australian football has more tackles per-minute of match play than male Australian football.

Data by Yale Medicine– that first started being recorded in the 1990s– has shown female football players are between two and ten times more likely to suffer an ACL injury than their male counterparts.

The differences in male and female bodies can have significant impacts when it comes to sporting injuries, including anatomical, biomechanical, physiological and hormonal factors, according to Lyz Evans from Women in Focus Physiotherapy and Health, a female-centred physiotherapy clinic in Sydney.

A hormonal example is that research has shown there are higher rates of ACL injuries in women just before and after menstruation.

“The female body is not simply a smaller version of a male body,” Evans said, echoing calls from many in the sport science space to focus greater injury prevention efforts toward female athletes.

Source: Why we need different injury prevention strategies in women’s sport

Increased powers for the Australian eSafety Commissioner will threaten freedom of speech

HRLA client and former Australian Breastfeeding Association counsellor Jasmine Sussex has experienced first-hand the way that government censorship of online speech works in practice.

Jasmine is a passionate and publicly vocal defender of women’s rights and breastfeeding mums. She was subject to censorship after she publicly contended that ‘men cannot breastfeed’ in response to a trans-identifying man’s public declaration to have done so.

Jasmine received a notice from Twitter advising her that her twitter comments would be withheld in Australia as they had “broken the law”. Twitter also advised that they had been contacted by a “government entity or law enforcement agency” claiming her tweets were unlawful.

In addition to being censored, Jasmine is now facing a complaint of vilification under the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Act from the trans-identifying man in question alleging that Jasmine has “incited hatred, contempt and serious ridicule” by publicly criticising this person’s pro-transgender activism on social media.

HRLA is providing Jasmine with pro-bono legal assistance to oppose this complaint in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal and to defend her right to stand up for the sex-based rights of women.

While the government’s review will examine an expansion of the eSafety Commissioner’s powers, it is important to note that the Commissioner already has substantial powers under the Online Safety Act 2021 to police online speech and to coerce internet platforms to remove content.

Jasmine’s case is a clear example of the way that such powers can be misused by bureaucrats to silence free debate about transgender ideology.

Source: HRLA

A sovereign citizen group is using a fake court to justify child kidnapping and extortion* – ABC News

The logo on the official-looking letter was unfamiliar, but even before opening it, Scott Murrin knew who it came from.

Beneath a motto that read “do no harm”, the “warrant” demanded he surrender his two sons to “court sheriffs” and submit himself for arrest.

A failure to comply, it read, would result in life imprisonment with “hard labour”.

The document was sent to Mr Murrin in March by a group calling itself Nmdaka Dalai Australis (NDA), a radical anti-government organisation that is aligned with the sovereign citizen movement.

Sovereign citizens oppose the government, viewing it as illegitimate and having no authority over them.

NDA was co-founded by Mr Murrin’s former partner Helen Delaney, who attracted national attention last year when a video went viral showing a NSW Police officer ripping out her car window to arrest her, as she voiced baseless* claims about why she and her companion were exempt from the law.

Ms Delaney lost custody of her children in 2022 and Mr Murrin says NDA is her latest attempt to take back their two sons by force, accusing her and her anti-government allies of making his family’s life “pure hell”.

Mr Murrin and his sons are far from the only ones to have been impacted by the group, that claims its own court, administered by its members who wear a uniform and call themselves “sheriffs”.

An ABC Investigation has uncovered how the group is using its “court” to justify the kidnap* of children involved in Family Court matters.

Many sovereign citizens espouse unfounded* beliefs that the country’s legal institutions are facilitating child trafficking.

Legal and extremism experts told the ABC the group’s activities were part of an alarming escalation of the sovereign citizen movement from public nuisance to dangerous menace.

Mr Murrin’s ordeal is not an isolated case — Ms Delaney has claimed the group is involved in more than a dozen Family Court matters across Australia, and ABC Investigations has confirmed that the spouse of a senior NDA figure has been charged in connection with an alleged child kidnapping case.

In Facebook posts seen by ABC Investigations, the alleged kidnapper said they took the child because they believed they were a victim of a child abuse ring.

Since becoming active in December last year, NDA claims to have grown to 150 members.

[Ed: * as alleged by ABC ]

Source: A sovereign citizen group is using a fake court to justify child kidnapping and extortion – ABC News

Financial mistakes among the first signs of dementia

In the five years before a dementia diagnosis, a person’s average credit score may start to weaken and their payment delinquencies rise, New York Federal Reserve researchers found after analysing US credit reporting and Medicare data.

More than 421,000 Australians are estimated to be living with dementia in 2024, and while young people can be affected, it is more common in people aged over 65.

But symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease and other related disorders (ADRD) may be appearing long before diagnosis.

Errors in financial decision making are often among the first noticeable signs caused by early-stage cognitive impairment.

And while the effects of pre-diagnosis ADRD were similar between women and men, credit scores recovered more quickly for men than women post-diagnosis.

Researchers said the gender disparity could reflect lower out-of-pocket costs associated with formal caregiving for men affected by ADRD, because wives more commonly provide informal care for a husband than vice versa.

It could also be due to the average difference in oversight over household finances between genders, or the differences the effect of living alone versus living with others has on men and women.

Source: Financial mistakes among the first signs of dementia

Critics are calling MONA ‘childish’, but history shows us how much the public love an art forger

The experts who criticise the fake Picassos and argue MONA’s reputation is damaged fail to recognise how the rebellious nature of art forgery so perfectly aligns with the museum’s reputation for shaking up the art industry.

Past exhibitions at MONA have created controversy and drawn protest from animal rights campaigners and enraged Christians.

One of the museum’s most popular works is a device that mimics the human digestive system and converts food into excrement, which is dispensed daily. The forged Picassos and the establishment’s snooty reaction actually encapsulates and emboldens the museum’s public image.

In time, the controversy will be seen as a positive story for MONA, and not the bonfire of integrity imagined by its critics.

The experts who warn of damage to Tasmania’s tourism industry have not stopped to appreciate the significance of a woman producing the fakes hung in the museum’s Ladies Lounge. Art forgery is exclusively a male activity.

Experts in this field such as Noah Charney and Thierry Lenain haven’t identified a single female art forger.

There may be hundreds of women producing art forgeries. They and their works are unknown because their paintings have not yet been revealed as fakes.

Until they are unmasked, Kirsha Kaechele can be recognised as the world’s most famous female art forger – an accolade that is certain to attract new visitors to the museum.

Source: Critics are calling MONA ‘childish’, but history shows us how much the public love an art forger

‘Horrifying’: Alarm over NSW’s child protection failures

A scathing report has found the NSW government is failing to meet any of its child protection responsibilities, with children cycling through temporary and emergency accommodation and the department not properly responding to serious allegations of abuse.

The NSW Ombudsman’s report, which has been labelled as “horrifying” by child welfare advocates, is the fourth damning report in as many months into the Department of Communities and Justice’s child protection services.

The Ombudsman found 75 per cent of children reported to be at risk of harm were not visited by a caseworker, prompting the watchdog to launch a maladministration investigation into the department’s response to these reports.

Department staff screen risk-of-harm reports to determine whether they meet a threshold of “significant harm”, which includes allegations of sexual abuse, serious physical abuse or serious neglect.

Just a quarter of children reported as at risk of significant harm received a face-to-face visit by a caseworker in 2022-23, down from 29 per cent in 2017-18, the Ombudsman found. Aboriginal children were four times more likely to be involved in risk of significant harm reports as non-Aboriginal children.

The report also found that one in three children had a substantiated allegation of abuse while in residential care.

The Ombudsman’s report, tabled in state parliament earlier this month, concluded that the department had failed to meet any of its core responsibilities of responding to harm reports, securing safe and permanent homes, and intervening early to prevent risk escalation.

The outcomes of the Ombudsman’s maladministration investigation will be presented to Washington and the department head. If steps are not taken to rectify the potential maladministration, the Ombudsman can make a follow-up report to parliament and require the minister to provide a public explanation.

Source: 12ft

Country Women’s Association of WA makes history in vote to allow men as members – ABC News

In short:

The Country Women’s Association of WA has voted to change its 100-year-old constitution and allow men to become associate members.

NSW, Tasmania, Victoria and the NT don’t allow men to be CWA members.

What’s next?

Men in WA will be able to apply for associate membership, which doesn’t allow for voting or individual branch membership.

—–

Following the vote, some members at the annual general meeting raised the issue of transgender women joining the association.

Ms Langdon said that while there was no specific provision in the constitution to recognise transgender women, they were welcome in the association, with some already members.

The vote means Western Australia is now the third state along with South Australia and Queensland to allow men into their ranks as non-voting members.

Queensland CWA president Sheila Campbell said the organisation had led the way by welcoming men and transgender women into the association since 2015 under a Friends of QCWA banner.

“Our association is open to all women, including transgender women, and men as non-voting Friends of QCWA,” she said.

A spokesperson for the CWA of Victoria said its branch did not have male members.

“We accept anyone who identifies as a woman to be a member,” they said.

[Ed: so very disappointing.]

Source: Country Women’s Association of WA makes history in vote to allow men as members – ABC News