Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

This speech is written by the one and only Pride and Protest.

This parliament is failing queer and trans people. This parliament is failing sex workers. We have a broken Sex Discrimination Act which allows for teachers to be unfairly dismissed or denied jobs simply for being LGBTI. We see Trumpian state and territory governments, like the Northern Territory and Queensland, denying trans youth access to gender affirming care and putting trans women and sistergirls in men's lock-ups. We have sex workers harassed at work and even deported by Border Force.

Many Labor MPs and senators signed the Trans Justice Pledge at the last election, and the Prime Minister joined fair day at Mardi Gras. But what do queer and trans people have to see from that? The Labor government has failed to act, and the most glaring example is in antidiscrimination reform. Despite recommendations from the Australian Law Reform Commission on updating the Sex Discrimination Act to remove the right to discriminate, there has been no action for equality. Recent calls for papers have shown that there have only been meetings with Christian lobby groups.

It is also important to be crystal clear that there is no contradiction between the right to religion and the right to equality before the law. These freedoms by religious employers are not truly about the right to practice one's faith; they are about the right for a boss to terminate the employment of queer people or to expel schoolchildren who are often in their own communities of faith.

Reforming the Sex Discrimination Act is about protecting the right of people to secure jobs and safe schooling, not religious freedom. If the Labor government was serious about supporting religious minorities, rather than ignoring queer rights, they could implement the recommendations by the envoy against Islamophobia to amend the Racial Discrimination Act. There's an entire antiracism framework ready to go, and not one of its recommendations is to get kids kicked out of school.

Labor's other main excuse for looking the other way while gay teachers get the sack is that they support bipartisanship, but who is this bipartisanship with? The same Liberal-National coalition who attacks trans youth in the NT and Queensland? There's nothing progressive about giving transphobes a veto on queer and trans rights. We have the numbers in this chamber and the other to pass this reform to the Sex Discrimination Act and to do so much more. We heard from the Greens that they support action on antidiscrimination reform just a few weeks ago, and independents questioned Albanese in the other House just last week. It's time for Labor to get with the times and stop giving the LNP a veto on queer rights.