Feds slam gender reform ‘madness’

THE Morrison Government has slammed Tasmania’s gender reform laws as “madness” and vowed to override them.

Assistant Treasurer Stuart Robert said removing gender from birth certificates would make it “impossible” to plan for women’s health services, such as cervical cancer vaccines.

“It’s not just reckless, it’s madness,” he told Sydney radio station 2GB yesterday.

“A dose of common sense would help here because we need to know who are women to prepare for these services,” he said.

He said that, as the minister responsible for data collection, he could not allow states to proceed with laws that would render it “impossible” for planning at a national level.

“I just can’t sit by and let states absolutely screw up our planning regime because of a drive to allow boys and girls to call themselves something else.”

Transforming Tasmania’s Martine Delaney said Mr Robert had got the facts wrong and should resign.

“Stuart Robert needs to resign or be sacked because this shows a complete willingness to open his mouth and put both feet in without finding out the facts before he does so,” Ms Delaney said.

She said the changes would only affect birth certificates, and original data would be retained for medical records and government planning purposes.

“The legislation ensures every data set collected by the ABS or for health planning will still be collected,” she said.

“That information will still be available to every agency that needs it, it simply won’t be on a birth certificate.”

Ms Delaney said Mr Robert’s views should not stand in the way of the people Tasmania’s laws stood to help.

Tasmania’s reforms would give parents a choice about whether to record gender on a baby’s birth certificate and allow people to change gender on their birth certificate at age 16.

The Labor and Greensbacked reforms passed through the Lower House with the vote of Speaker Sue Hickey and are likely to be debated in the Upper House in March.