In New South Wales (NSW) in Australia, a watered-down bill was passed in the state parliament to amend the Equality Bill that will now give transgender people the right to change their sex on their birth certificates without undergoing gender-affirmation surgery, as well as making non-binary a gender option in birth certificates. This will bring NSW in line with all other jurisdictions across the country.
According to independent MP Alex Greenwich, who introduced the bill in August 2023, this legislation could “improve LGBTQIA+ dignity, safety and equality”. “We’ve got more work to do and we start that work now with new confidence from these significant wins for our community.”
Earlier, the NSW Government announced its support of the amendment to the Equality Bill to offer protections for members of the LGBTQIA+ community.
The amended Equality Legislation Amendment (LGBTQIA+) Bill 2023 proposes various legislative changes, including:
- Allowing people to change their registered sex through an administrative process, without requiring surgery.
- Making hatred for or prejudice against transgender, gender diverse or intersex people an aggravating factor in sentencing.
- Updating terminology in laws to replace terms such as “HIV infection” and “suffering with AIDS” to “living with HIV/AIDS”.
- Clarifying in the Mental Health Act 2007 that expressing, or refusing to express, a particular gender identity does not that someone has a mental illness.
- Enabling a parentage order to be made for a child born through international commercial surrogacy, if it is in the best interests of the child and other criteria and important safeguards are met.
Michael Daley, NSW Attorney General, was quoted as saying that the Equality Bill “seeks to change multiple pieces of legislation to make NSW a more inclusive place. As legislators, it is our job to reflect the views of the community, and in this instance, it is clearly time for these pieces of legislation to be updated.”
For the NSW government, this legislation if but one of its “ongoing work… to progress reforms that ensure all members of our community feel valued, respected and equal.” Among others, it:
- Introduced the Conversion Practices Ban Act 2024, which passed the NSW Parliament in March to ban LGBTQIA+ conversion practices
- Issued a formal apology (via the Premier) to people convicted under discriminatory laws that criminalized homosexual acts, and passed legislation that meant more of these offences were able to be extinguished
- Supported 19 recommendations delivered by the Special Commission of Inquiry into LGBTQIA hate crimes that examined the unsolved deaths of LGBTQIA people and found shortfalls in historical responses by the NSW Government.
- Established the LGBTQIA+ Advisory Council to provide a mechanism for ongoing community consultation
