Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Another week and there's another case of an Australian sporting body treating female athletes like second-class citizens. We all know that women's sport exists to provide fair competition for female athletes. World Athletics recognise this. World Aquatics recognise this. World Rugby recognise this. The overwhelming majority of people, especially female athletes, recognise this. But Tennis Australia apparently can't bear the thought of female tennis players being guaranteed single-sex women's tennis competitions.

Last week, Tennis Australia CEO, Craig Tiley, told media that they were attempting to stop the world governing bodies from endorsing a policy which would prevent males from playing women's tennis. Tiley said:

We are trying to influence the decision now. We're an organisation that believes in inclusivity, in diversity and in equality, so any decision made will need to be in line with our core values.

The core value he refers to of course is that women aren't important enough to be entitled to single-sex competition, especially in community sport where 99.9 per cent of women and girls play.

If a male wants to play women's tennis in Australia, Tennis Australia says that this must be actively encouraged. Their policies say:

An individual player should be able to nominate their gender identity at the time of nomination for any upcoming competition, tournament or term of play.

This is despite the fact that it is unequivocally proven that male tennis players have huge physical advantage over female players, advantages which cannot be removed by testosterone reduction. It's those advantages that Serena Williams was referring to when she said: 'If I were to play Andy Murray, I would lose, 6-0, 6-0, in … 10 minutes.'

The only logical, scientific, fair outcome for women is that women's tennis must be a single-sex category. But Tennis Australia is campaigning for the opposite position, one which defies the science and tells female players that fairness isn't a priority for them. They say that a mediocre male should be able to identify in a women's competition and deny female players the right to play in a fair competition against members of their own sex.

You only have to look at what's happening in cycling right now to see how unfair it is to women once sporting bodies open that door. As the great Martina Navratilova said:

By including trans identified males in female category, biological females lose a spot. It's that simple. Seems to me Craig Tilley doesn't understand that concept.

It's telling that in Tennis Australia's explanation for trying to influence the ITF and WTA policies they didn't say let's follow the science and they didn't say fairness for female athletes is the top priority, because those aren't the values that Australia's major sporting codes are talking about when they're talking about diversity and inclusion. They don't mean inclusion for women. They are simply trying to stop the international governing bodies from exposing Tennis Australia for selling out women. Let's remember that Tennis Australia last year ordered spectators to remove T-shirts asking, 'Where is Peng Shuai?' What does that tell you about an organisation that sees more value in sucking up to people with power than looking out for women's wellbeing?

When the Prime Minister or the Minister for Sport are asked about this topic, as the Minister for Sport was just last week, their media lines are: 'Let's leave it to the sporting codes. They know how to manage this.' Well, Tennis Australia has shown us what Australian sporting codes will do to women when you leave it to them: throw them under the bus, ignore the science and lobby against single-sex women's sport. The Prime Minister and the Minister for Sport know that, because we've seen Australian sporting codes doing this for years. World Rugby told Rugby Australia that it is incredibly dangerous for males to be playing women's rugby. Rugby Australia ignored them and allows it to happen. The AFL and Football Australia do the same.

Of course, they'll hesitate if the sporting competition is going to be on television, at an elite level, but only because they don't want Australians to actually see how unfair it is for males to be in women's competitions. But at a community level, where female players have no voice and are punished and silenced if they dare to complain, all of these sporting bodies are actively encouraging males to play in women's competitions. For years they've gotten away with it by silencing women who try to speak out. Female athletes have been threatened that their careers will suffer or told that they'll lose sponsorships or selection.

Those of us who have spoken out publicly on their behalf have had the authorities coming for us and threatening us with legal action. Almost four years ago, I was told by the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Commissioner that I was under investigation and ordered to attend a compulsory conciliation because I said that women's sport is for females. Authorities in this country will try to punish you for saying publicly that eligibility for female sport should be restricted to females, yet that is exactly the position of World Athletics, World Aquatics and World Rugby. But Australians aren't allowed to say it. Why? Because men like the Prime Minister and Craig Tiley have decreed that it's not a discussion us ordinary people are qualified to have. Leave it to the experts, they say, by which they mean the very same people who decided it was a good idea to let males play women's sport in the first place. As Orwell once said, 'One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.'

The most ridiculous thing about all of this is that guaranteeing single-sex categories for women and girls does not prevent anyone from playing sport. I'm going to call out the media here tonight for constantly and deliberately misreporting to cause division and for seeking to cast women as the villains in this story. How many times have you heard the media say something like, 'World Athletics have banned transgender athletes'? It is rubbish, and the media knows it. Nobody has been banned from playing sport. People have been asked to follow the same rules as everybody else. A single-sex category for women and girls does not ban anyone from playing sport, including trans people. Single-sex women's categories simply acknowledge that, in the vast majority of sports, it is unfair to expect women to compete against males. That's why women's sport was established in the first place. There is absolutely nothing wrong in having a single-sex women's category. That doesn't stop trans people from competing in their own sex category, in an open division or, at a social level, in a mixed team.

The most inclusive thing that Tennis Australia, the ITF and the WTA could do is commit to a single-sex category for women and girls in addition to an open category. Nobody will be banned from playing, there will be a place for everyone in sport, but women and girls will be guaranteed fair competition. It's win-win. But they don't want to do that, because, to them, inclusion means women moving aside and putting someone else's desires above their own right to compete fairly. In the Orwellian world we're living in now, when Tennis Australia lobbies internationally for males to be able to play women's tennis, that's inclusive and that's equality. But, when Australians say, 'Wait a minute; that's not fair,' suddenly that's a culture war. It is just one of the many silencing tactics employed against us for speaking up in defence of women's rights—women's rights which the likes of Tennis Australia are happily campaigning against on the international stage with this government's blessing.