For the better part of a decade, activists have campaigned for West Australian Labor to amend the laws governing gender reassignment.
Queer Liberation Boorloo (QLB) has been organising actions since last September calling on Labor to follow through on its promises to the queer community, including gender recognition and anti-discrimination reforms.
QLB confronted Premier Roger Cook and the Attorney General John Quigley at the annual Pride March, with a banner stating: “The ALP are all talk, no action”.
Many non-government organisations, in particular Rainbow Futures WA, have been lobbying the Premier for change.
The grassroots approach has worked. On April 17, Labor introduced the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Amendment (Sex or Gender Changes) Bill 2024.
If passed, it would repeal the Gender Reassignment Act 2000 and the Gender Reassignment Regulations 2001 and mean a person only has to submit an application for gender recognition, with supporting evidence from a doctor or psychologist.
Alex Wallace, a spokesperson for QLB said: “The reforms will undoubtedly make it easier for queer people to amend their records to accurately reflect who they are and improve access to equal opportunity protections.”
However, the bill still falls far short of what LGBTIQ organisations are calling for.
Rainbow Futures WA submitted a report to Labor pushing for a statutory declaration model similar to the Victorian system, which does not require medical evidence, something that transgender people find invasive and inappropriate.
The Darlington Statement, produced by Australian and Aotearoa/New Zealand intersex organisations and independent advocates in 2017, advocates for “sex” and “gender” to be removed from identity documentation “as with race and religion”.
It also warns against the implementation of intersex gender markers where gender is included on identity documents.
WA Labor has included an “intersex/indeterminant” gender marker in the regulations, accompanying the bill, ignoring demands from the intersex community who oppose the use of these categories, for many reasons, including that marking children with differences in sex characteristics from birth may increase the rate of nonconsensual deferrable surgeries.
It also conflates intersex people’s gender identity with their sex characteristics, while most intersex people identify with a binary gender.
Quigley has also come under fire for his demeaning comments in an interview on Youth Jam Radio, where he belittled the experiences of queer people, who had undergone conversion practices.
Labor has abandoned other promises to reform laws governing LGBTIQ people, including outlawing conversion practices and reforming the anti-discrimination law.
It has not ruled out reforming the Surrogacy Act 2008, but whether it does that before the 2025 election remains to be seen.
[Nova Sobieralski is active with Queer Liberation Boorloo.]