Tuesday 19 June 2018

Six months after federal marriage equality laws passed, the NSW Parliament updated state laws to reflect that married people include same sex couples and couples who are in gender diverse relationships.

While the bill mostly involved consequential changes to language, it also removed the cruel and discriminatory ‘forced trans divorce’ provisions, which prevented someone who had undergone sex affirmation surgery from updating their birth certificate with their new sex if they were already married. I welcome this further step towards equality and in Parliament called for more work to remedy the attacks on vulnerable people during the plebiscite campaign, including trans and gender diverse people and the children of same-sex parented families.

I am committed to working with government, opposition, and crossbench MPs to remove the need for forced surgical intervention for people transitioning sex or gender and welcome the Attorney-General’s commitment to consider proposals. My speech is HERE.