Victoria’s equality minister says the government will oppose a push to examine “transgender ideology” as part of an upcoming inquiry into cults.
Earlier this month, anti-trans lobby group Binary published a blog post saying the Liberal party MP Moira Deeming was “urging people to make submissions” to the parliamentary inquiry into cults and organised fringe groups and had “shared a helpful document with suggested answers”.
Deeming has told Guardian Australia she distributed the document that claims transgender ideology “operates like a cult and harms people in the same way”.
Deeming accused the government of “exploiting minority groups to shield themselves from legitimate criticism”.
“Many people believe the Victorian Labor government’s hard line, extreme and oppressive laws used to enforce vaccine mandates and lockdowns, as well as unquestioning submission to the most extreme elements of transgender ideology, meets the threshold for the inquiry’s definition of manipulative, coercive and harmful control tactics that cult and fringe groups employ,” Deeming said.
But the minister for equality, Vicki Ward, said the inquiry would not cover gender identity or healthcare, as the issues were outside its scope.
“This inquiry has been established to examine harmful and coercive groups, not target trans and gender diverse communities,” Ward said.
The inquiry was established in April, after allegations of coercive practices at the Geelong Revival Church, as detailed in LiSTNR’s investigative podcast series Secrets We Keep: Pray Harder. The church has not publicly commented on the allegations contained in the podcast.
Led by the legislative assembly’s legal and social issues committee, it begins public hearings on Wednesday, with its first witnesses former members of the church and the podcast’s creator, journalist Richard Baker.
The committee’s chair, Labor MP Ella George, said the inquiry was “examining techniques being used by certain groups to attract and retain members and whether they amount to coercion that should be criminalised”.
She said the inquiry “does not focus on a group’s beliefs or ideology” and pointed to a guidance note on the committee’s website for more information.
It is understood the committee reviews all submissions to the inquiry, assessing their relevance according to the terms of reference before deciding whether to accept them. Only submissions that are accepted are published online.