Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tardiness is next to godlessness, but what's more important than that is making sure that, with the Olympics coming up, we have the capacity to ensure that we have a fair competition, the capacity to ensure that men who have XY chromosomes will compete against men who have XY chromosomes and women who have XX chromosomes will compete against women who have XX chromosomes. The reason I bring this up is that we now have one of the greatest incursions into women's rights. I have four daughters and, to be honest, it is a political correctness absurdity that a man can decide that they're a woman and then insist on competing against other women. How does this work in weightlifting or in boxing? More and more my daughters are playing sports such as touch football and contact football. This is just not fair. This is not right. For us to make sure that this doesn't happen, we have to deal with such issues as one of the women weightlifters, who comes from New Zealand and who wants to compete as a woman. But the reality is her genetic make-up is XY. She is not a she, she is a bloke. She is a man.

Of course, this stirs people up. They think it is an outrageous statement that for once we want to rely on the science. When we talk about climate, we can never walk away from the science. But, apparently, when you talk about genetics, you can leave the science for dead. It's completely and utterly irrelevant. It is just how you feel about things on the day. Why is it seen to be somehow allowable that you get the absolute supremacy of male rights over women's rights because of the views of an incredibly small proportion of people who are born XY? Let's take away calling people women or men. Let's call them exactly what they are: born XY, born XX. But if you were born XY or you were born XX, there is nothing on God's earth that is going to change it and there is nothing on the non-God's earth that's going to change it. There is nothing in science that can possibly change it. There is nothing in the weather that will change it. It is just an absolute scientific fact.

What we have to work out is how we got ourselves into this position. We have been bullied, coerced, manipulated, guilt-tripped into a position where we have to say we cannot talk about that, it's another thing we just must accept. Who is the beneficiary of all of this? Who is the beneficiary when we actually go down this slippery slope of saying, 'That is yet another form of political correctness which we must never mention because inevitably it is right and it is just and it is scientifically and factually correct'? Of course the beneficiary is a small group of blokes. The actual number of people who would be genuinely of dual nature, I suppose, would be about one in 83,000. For that one in 83,000, obviously we have to give them the greatest sympathy possible. But we're not dealing with the one in 83,000. We are dealing with other people who have made their own choice about this.

The AIC and Sports Australia released the trans and gender diversity inclusion policy guidelines in June 2019. They prioritise gender identity over sex and promote the idea that a person can register to compete in the sports category of their choice, including accessing the toilets, change rooms and overnight accommodation of their choice. A person's transgender status is also to be kept confidential. When my daughters and my sons go to play sport as young people, they also have the right to be in a position which their parents deem safe and which I believe is safe for them. This means honesty in science. I hope as we go towards these Olympics we have honesty in the science of how people compete.

House adjourned at 19:59