Our editor-in-chief, Isabelle, sent this letter today to her local Member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly. We are republishing it for visibility.
Dear [redacted],
I hope you are well. I had the pleasure earlier today of speaking to one of your office staff, [redacted], who was very polite and helpful.
You may be aware that the Full Court of the Federal Court recently decided a case with the memorable name of Giggle v Tickle [2026] FCAFC 64. The judges in that case unanimously reaffirmed that the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) protects transgender women from being discriminated against for being trans.
As reported by the Star Observer, on 19 May, Chris Minns, Premier of New South Wales, responded to that case by suggesting that the law needs to reflect “biological differences between people who are born male and people who were born female”. Mr Minns disagreed with Angus Taylor rewriting the Act but suggested in-principle support for doing so regardless. He further stated his support for his existing positions of excluding transgender people from playing sport with members of the same gender, and for placing trans women in men’s prisons.
Mr Minns’ positions are ethically abhorrent and, to the extent that they rely on claims about reality, they have no basis in fact. I am also aware that they are enabled partly by an increasing tendency for centrist and liberal parties worldwide to abandon trans people or actively discriminate against them, justifying doing so on the basis either of pragmatism or of the popular will (invariably not one whose existence is backed by any kind of evidence). Giggle seems to have been a particular flashpoint in that regard.
I am a left-wing swing voter. Sometimes I vote 1 Labor. Sometimes I vote 1 Greens, 2 Labor. I moved here after the most recent state election, but people I’ve spoken to seem to like you as a state MP. For my part, I started caring about trans rights fairly late in the Palaszczuk Government, but was satisfied with what I saw, particularly the 2020 conversion therapy ban and the 2023 reforms making it easier for trans people to change their legal gender. I have no particular antipathy toward you and very little toward the Party. But I also know that the Minns Government enacted similar birth certificate reforms less than a year ago, and here we are anyway.
If I detect even a hint that Queensland Labor is moving in the same direction as Chris Minns, then I will have no choice but to make Labor my enemy. I haven’t canvassed at an election for several years, but, if Labor sells out trans people, it will have successfully mobilised me. In the event that Labor adopts a position of political transphobia — tactical or otherwise — I will canvass for the Greens, or, if I’m not satisfied with the Greens option, I will canvass for any other party which chooses to preserve trans people’s civil rights. I will also preference Labor below the LNP, and I will encourage everyone else I know to do so as well. I will do so because at that point the only value I will be able to extract from the electoral process is making it more difficult for a party to win by throwing minorities under the bus.
I’m not sending this to make you read a long letter, or out of hatred for you as a human being. I’m sending this because I see every reason to like you, and I would prefer to continue doing so. I hope you take that into consideration, and I hope any action you might take on transgender rights will be ethically sound and well-informed.
Sincerely yours,
Isabelle Moreton
[further personal details redacted]