I sent this message today to the office of Julia Gillard AC, who previously served as Prime Minister of Australia, regarding some remarks she made at Manchester University.
None of the wording has been changed from the copy I sent to Gillard’s office. Some of the formatting has been modified for readability in this context; for instance, long passages that were enclosed in quote marks in the original are block quotes here.
Dear Ms Gillard,
I hope this letter finds you well.
I write regarding remarks made by you at Manchester University on Wednesday 1 July and reported in The Spectator Australia. Your interlocutor said to you:
I want you to reflect on your time as Prime Minister of Australia when you changed the sex discrimination law to reflect gender identity and not sex, meaning that women in Australia are no longer defined in law by biological sex. Did you consider or reflect on some of the unintended consequences of that?
Reportedly you responded:
Look, I’m not sure this is going to be too interesting to the audience because it’s a very Australian matter. But let me just respond in the following way: if you look at the parliamentary debates in the changes to the Sex Discrimination Act in 2012, you’ll find that the issues you’re referring to were not raised by anyone because they simply weren’t a matter of public discourse the way they are today. So, it was a different time. It wasn’t something squarely before the Parliament at the time the legislation was being amended. So, I think we make an error in uplifting what we know now in public discourse now and just putting it down 14 years ago.
I write to you to express my disappointment. In 2012, I thought your Government had a significantly better chance of making positive change than that of your predecessor, Dr Rudd. When your Government was turfed out in the ultimately futile pursuit of vulgar electoral advantage, I perceived you as something of an unjust martyr to the vicious politics of the Labor Party. The fact that it was your Government that secured the passage of the Sex Discrimination Amendment Act 2013 (“SDAA 2013“) seemed to vindicate my view in both of those regards, both inasmuch as Labor ought not to have removed you and inasmuch as your Government was one of the few in Australian history to be a positive force for good.
I can only interpret your remarks at Manchester University on Wednesday as a decision to disclaim what I had considered to have been one of your greatest achievements. I am furthermore disappointed in the way that you chose to do so.
I write on LGBTQ+ affairs in Australia. I am familiar with the parliamentary debates concerning the SDAA 2013. They were in fact a matter of public discourse; the list of submissions to the House and Senate inquiries on the Bills contain many individuals and organisations who are still prominent participants in the public discourse today. The themes of their submissions, in favour and against, are also near-identical to those today, and echo themes that had recurred constantly since before you entered politics. Whether you personally actively knew that people said these things is, with respect, immaterial. They did so, and they said them to your colleagues, and to you. You did know or reasonably ought to have known — at least some of the colleagues upon whom you could have called certainly did know — and you proceeded to take the right action anyway. To disclaim it now because the heat has been turned up is an act of rank cowardice and I cannot deny that my opinion of you as a human being has been substantially diminished thereby.
I furthermore take issue with your characterisation of the current state of the public discourse as “what we know now”. The most coherent reading of your remarks at which I am able to arrive is that you feel that the change in the public discourse (“in public discourse now”) has occurred primarily because the balance of factual evidence (“what we know”) has changed (“now”). This is not the case. Certainly the volume and ferocity of anti-transgender rhetoric has increased markedly. The facts have not changed. If anything, on those questions that the majority of society considers relevant with respect to the question of transgender equality, the balance of factual evidence has now tilted significantly in favour of transgender people. Nothing is achieved by conceding for the sake of argument that it is otherwise, because that contention is, in empirical, material, day-to-day reality, false.
Finally, I must take issue with the idea that anti-transgender discourse is something that was not “squarely before the Parliament”. The provisions added to the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 by the SDAA 2013 constitute the central body of Australian federal law on anti-transgender discrimination. You were in effect deciding to what degree Australian law would reflect the equal citizenship of an entire class of people. There was no other time at which the whole terrain of the controversy, both in its broad scope and in its sordid detail, might have been more directly and plainly laid before you. As an erstwhile supporter of your martyred Government, this statement strikes me as, with all due respect, risible. I can only assume that those ideologically opposed to transgender people’s humanity, who by and large already hated you, will not be kinder.
I strongly urge you to reconsider your stance and to consult with those experts and reputable sources to whom, as a respected public figure and person of influence, I can only imagine you continue to have access. The coming years will be a constant, escalating firestorm of acrimony and controversy in every domain of political life. It does nobody any good for those we imagined to be the best of us — yourself included — to turn away in fear at the first lick of flame.
Yours,
Isabelle Moreton