Biological differences between males and females “must” be reflected in the law and in female sport, Premier Chris Minns says.
The comments come after Opposition Leader Angus Taylor vowed to change federal laws to protect female-only spaces.
Mr Minns would not back Mr Taylor’s proposal on Tuesday, but the Premier did insist that NSW must recognise the “biological between people who were born male and people who were born female”.
“That needs to be reflected in the law,” he said.
He said the NSW law will uphold those differences in prisons, and in “female sport”.
“If you’re born biologically male and you change your government certificates to be female, it will not mean that you can change from a male prison to a female prison,” he said.
Last year, the Minns government voted to allow people in NSW to change the sex on their birth certificate without undergoing surgery.
Mr Minns has consistently said that prisoners who are biologically male should not be housed in female prisons.
“There are distinctions in the law in NSW that we must uphold, because we think that they’re important, notwithstanding the changes that we’ve made to birth certificates for transgender members of our community,” he said.
Earlier this week, the state’s minister for women has refused to provide a definition of the word “woman”, despite the term being in her job title.
Asked her position on “the definition of a woman”, Labor frontbencher Jodie Harrison ducked the question, saying: “As this matter may be subject to further legal processes, it would not be appropriate to comment on the specifics of the case.”
Source: What’s a woman? Minister for Women just can’t say | NT News