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Pyrophore: Lia Finocchiaro

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Basics

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Detail

Lia Finocchiaro is an Australian politician affiliated with the Country Liberal Party of the Northern Territory. As of the current revision of this article, she is the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory.

Timeline

2025, October 13. Mix 104.9 broadcasts an episode of 360. The host, Katie Woolf, has the following exchange with her guest, Finocchiaro:1

WOOLF: I want to ask you about an email that’s been sent to the Prime Minister, and also to you, and all of the other Chief Ministers and Premiers across Australia. Now, it’s from the Women’s Forum Australia. They have written, they say, with profound concern for the safety and dignity of women incarcerated in our nation’s prisons, following a series of deeply troubling cases that have come to light across multiple jurisdictions which involve male offenders who identify as women being housed in female facilities.

Now I’ve read a couple of these stories out throughout my whip around the nation over the last week, and they’re woeful. A couple of weeks ago, The Australian was reporting that a trans-identified male offender who sexually abused his own five-year-old daughter had been placed in a facility in Victoria. Now, disturbingly, the court accepted arguments that the offender’s gender dysorphia [sic] and struggles with transition diminished his culpability, and that he committed the abuse, in part, to be validated as a woman.2 Now, when I’ve read that story, I felt sick in the guts. It is absolutely woeful that anybody’s sentence against their own child — male, female, whatever — would have any kind of justification around it.

But then, on Friday, The Australian also revealed an even more shocking story from South Australia, where, inside a Port Augusta prison which accommodates both male and female offenders, a female prisoner was failed in every way imaginable. The letter states, by the state’s Correctional Services, she was placed in a cell with a notoriously violent trans-identified male offender and was subjected to a horrific sexual assault by him.3 Now they’re just a couple of the incidents that have been listed here. Presumably you’ve received this letter.

FINOCCHIARO: Yeah, I have received this letter, and we moved very quickly to confirm with Corrections. And I can absolutely attest to every Territorian that — trans — if you are born a gender, that is the prison you go in. So our women’s prison [sic] have women only. Trans people are not in our women’s part of our prison, and, in fact, we’re strengthening that even further by, of course, moving ahead to build the new women’s prison, which will provide even better levels of care to our women in custody.

WOOLF: And so, if somebody transitions from male to female, will they be able —

FINOCCHIARO: They will be in the men’s prison. Currently that is the rule, and that rule will continue.

WOOLF: What about if their birth certificate et cetera says that they are female?

FINOCCHIARO: Well, look, I don’t know the exact details on how this stuff is worked out. I’m presuming chromosomes get involved, Katie. But at the end of the day, if you’re born a bloke, you go to men’s prison, and we’ll deal with you there, but we do not mix across our prison system.

WOOLF: I mean, in this letter, it says the incarceration of male offenders in women’s prisons represents a national human rights crisis. So what do you say to Territorians this morning on that?

FINOCCHIARO: Yeah, and it — the letter is actually scathing. It goes as far as to say that this, you know, these types of laws that other states have where they are allowing trans into other-gender [sic] prisons, is actually this ideologically-driven law coming from state, you know, Labor — it’s basically — call it out — it’s Labor state and federal governments running this social engineering agenda. And that couldn’t be further from what our government is about, Katie. This is just practical common sense. It’s not dissimilar to the argument around trans men [sic] in women’s sport. And I think it’s good that the Women’s Forum have stood up for women and said, hang on a second, I mean, you know, women have been fighting for rights for decades, generations, Katie. And so no, you will not be seeing trans men or women in women’s prison.

WOOLF: I mean, what do you say to anybody who, who says, you know, that that’s the wrong direction, that, you know, people — Look, I’ve got, I’ve got absolutely no issue with trans people in any way, shape or form —

FINOCCHIARO: — Absolutely. Me neither.

WOOLF: — no issue whatsoever. But I do start to have issue when we are having women’s rights eroded as a result. Now the other thing that I’m really worried about, or that I certainly worry about in reading some of those different stories in the national media, is that you have to make sure that women are safe, whether they’re in the prison, no matter where they are, they have to be safe. And I think it is worth pointing out that no matter what gender you are, that you know you find absolute creeps and people that are prepared to do the wrong thing, no matter where they’re from, no matter what their background. But I do think it is incredibly important that women are safe.

FINOCCHIARO: Yeah, I agree with you totally, Katie. This is not about discrimination. This is about safety. This is about understanding the way someone is built, and at the end of the day, you know people will be — Your text line is probably blowing up with all the — I can just imagine what texts you’re getting, Katie. But at the end of the day, we’re not into this nonsense in the Territory, my Government isn’t — this is not what we are about. If you were born a man, you will go to male prison. If you do the wrong thing, our cops will come and get you and will happily find you a bed. Equally, if you’re a woman and you do the wrong thing, you’ll end up in a woman’s prison. But there will be no blurring of those lines. There isn’t and there won’t be going forward.

Footnotes

  1. Woolf (2025). ↩ī¸Ž
  2. Reference to DPP v Maloney [2024] VCC 1328. ↩ī¸Ž
  3. Reference to Krista Richards. ↩ī¸Ž

References

Woolf, K. (Host). (2025, October 13). Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro has defended her appointment of Martin Dole as Police Commissioner saying he is a born and … [Audio podcast episode]. In 360 with Katie Woolf. Mix 104.9 (ARN Media Ltd); iHeartRadio (iHeartMedia, Inc.). Retrieved 12 March 2026.

Metadata

  • Version: 1 (12 March 2026).
  • Created: 12 March 2026.