"Trans rights are non-negotiable"

Transgender agenda: Bibliography | Issues | Peace Plan | Non-negotiable Rights |

Adam Bandt, National Press Club, Canberra, 13 April 2022 [excerpt].

Contents

Introduction

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1. Introduction

The transgender agenda and its attack on female and other rights has caused a lot of damage to the Australian Greens over the years since 2010 when chemical and surgical transitioning took hold. Party co-founder Drew Hutton was sacked from the party in July 2025 because of it; Linda Gale was sacked from her position as leader of the Victorian Greens because of it; Tammy Franks, leading parliamentary representative in South Australia quit in May 2025 because bullying, false claims and gaslighting from other members of the party. The latter could be said to be associated with it due to the direction being taken by the party leadership in seeking to align with Gen Z issues. Respect for "traditional" Greens values and policies have fallen by the wayside. Trans rights can be basic human rights, but not all of them are; and trans non-basic human rights - like all such rights - are negotiable.

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1. The Bandt statement

On 12 April 2022, in a speech before the National Press Club in Canberra, the Australian Greens party leader and Member for Melbourne Adam Bandt declared that "trans rights are non-negotiable for the Greens" after stating that "amongst young transgender people nearly half of them had attempted suicide."

The Greens statement was therefore part of seeking to ameliorate this declared threat to the lives of young people. Whilst a noble reason, the truth of the matter was not as simple as allowing young people to be subject to biological modification through the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones (drugs); or physical mutilation through the use of radical surgeries such as what came to be known as top surgery or bottom surgery whereby sexual organs and others parts of the body were permanently removed or reshaped. This suicide prevention claim was the primary driver for the radical transgender agenda which had been put in place around the world since the mid' 2010s, and most especially in the West. It has remained in place through to the writing of this article in July 2025.

At that time, the then current leader of the Australian Greens Larissa Waters declared in a statement following the expulsion of Greens Party co-founder Drew Hutton, that:

..... Waters said her party’s stance that “trans rights are human rights” had been determined and “backed again and again” by thousands of party members”,“pretty much all” of whom were able to have respectful policy discussions “even when we disagree”. “Greens members have been working hard to resolve this matter through the party’s governance processes, and to ensure that the party’s important work on environmental, climate, economic, and social justice doesn’t stop because of one man’s focus on how other people identify,” she said in a statement.

To claim that thousands of Greens members agreed to this is disingenuous for a number of reasons:

* The issues involved in the transgender agenda rolled out over a number of years

* The negative aspects of the transgender agenda appeared over time

* There developed within the Greens a cancel culture, an abandonment of the traditional concensus methodology and a tendency to refer to ANY criticism of the transgender agenda as transphobic, when it was not.

As a result, debate was stifled and muted; there was no open discussion of the evolving de-transitioning trend; an no person in the party who openly maintained a critical stance in regards to the issue.

There were senior members of the party who had a vested interest in the transgender agenda and there was never any discussion as to the level of conflict-of-interest this engendered. Instead, the members were looked on as experts in the field and appeared to have set the agenda for the party's response to the issue. It would seem that there was "nobody in the room" to offer a critical opinion and question elements of the evolving policy position. As a result, the transgender policy was in direction contradiction with elements of the women's policy. This was never discussion or called out. When the present writer attempted to raise it during a policy development meeting the discussion was immediately shut down.

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2. Transgender rights are not human rights

Adam Bandt, in his statement of 13 April 2022, got it wrong. He conflated transgender rights with basic human rights. The two are different - very different. Basic human rights are clearly defined and understood, as in the following definition and descriptions by Amnesty International:

Basic human rights are the fundamental rights and freedoms inherent to all human beings, regardless of nationality, sex, language, religion, or any other status.These rights are universal, inalienable, and interdependent, meaning they apply to everyone, cannot be taken away, and are interconnected. They range from the most basic, like the right to life, to those that make life worth living, such as the rights to education, work, and health.

What are human rights?, Amnesty International, YouTube, duration: 2.38 minutes.

Trans rights are a set of negotiated rights and, as such, not non-negotiable. For example, for a man to simply state that he is a woman does not obligate any other person to accept that statement. Why? Because a man is not a woman, just as a woman is not a man. Either party can present as the opposite sex, and truly feel or believe that they are the opposite sex, but that does not make it so, neither does is negate the nature of reality and of the basic existence of two different sexes, i.e., male and female.

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3. Contentious issues

Amidst all the political arguing and ideological spat, there are some basic societal issues at play in relations to the transgender agenda and how it has played out in Western societies over the years since the early 2010s when new drugs and surgical techniques offer one the ability to physically change how they presented to the world. These issues include the following:

* The majority of the human population is male or female. Genetic aberrations of basic human biology exist, but are a small fraction of the whole (less than 1%). The failure of the transgender movement to accept this fact is key to the conflicts arising with the general population.

* One cannot change one's sex - you are either male or female. One again, there are genetic / biological variations, but they are small in number (less than 1%). With the availability of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone treatments, and medical procedures such as bottom and top surgery.

* Affirmation of one's perception of themselves is the medical and legal norm. This supports the unreality that a man is a woman, and a woman is a man, or a person has no gender (i.e. is non-binary). This negation of the physical reality is the cause for much conflict with the general public, and especially when legislation in introduced to require law enforcement to support this unreality.

* The transgender agenda subjugates the rights of women. This manifests in numerous ways, such as men now engaging in women's sport, with an inherent unfair advantage; men taking the jobs of women, without any commensurate reverse as in women taking the jobs of men to even the score;....

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4. Departures and Sackings

The following is a list of some of the most public instances of where Greens members have been treated badly by the party.

* Drew Hutton - sacked by Queensland Greens party, July 2025. Issue: Transgender agenda and women's rights.

* Tina Kardrostami - Ryde city councillor, quits party in July 2025 over failure to condemn terrorist groups.

* Linda Gale - Victorian Greens leader sacked from position in the party over the transgender agenda and women's rights issues, and subject to ongoing harassment as a member. Following the Melbourne rally, Victorian Greens activist Linda Gale published on a Greens-related discussion site a critique of the party's action in following the distorted media reporting and associating the Let Women Speak rally with the neo-Nazis, plus going further to cite it as an anti-trans rally (National Tribune 2022). Gale would ultimately pay a heavy price for speaking out in this way in support of the women's rights movement: She would be sacked from her senior position in the party (refer detailed account below).

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Australian Greens: The Linda Gale case

The first Children's Gender Clinic appeared in the United States in 2007. However, the international move towards an expansion of transgender rights and chemical and medical interventions can be traced back to the mid 2010s, with a likely profiteering motive from the medical and pharmaceutical sector (Bilek 2023). The Australian Greens, as a traditional Left-wing party, though with an environmental focus, was amongst those supporting the evolving transgender agenda. For example, following on an earlier speech given to note the Transgender Day of Remembrance on 20 November 2015, on 22 December Australian Greens Senator Janet Rice asked a question in an Australian Senate Estimates Committee about improved access through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) to puberty blockers for young people who identified as transgender. She highlighted in her question concerns over high suicide rates amongst this cohort, implying that freer access to the drugs would lower the suicide rates. The response in part mentioned the use of testosterone for young females. Rice's action reflected similar events at that time in the United States and Europe. This was an early pointer to the trans-active stance which would appear in coming years, and which would become part of every major Western political party. It also subsequently flowed over into the operations of government and the judiciary.

As evidence of this, during the latter part of the 2010s the Australian Greens developed their Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Intersex Policy, and sought to accommodate the transgender sector in response to calls by trans activists around the country for a more proactive position by political parties. In 2017 a breakaway group within the Victorian Greens set up a Facebook site entitled Greens Voters Against SWERFs and TERFs in the Victorian Greens. It sought to more aggressively pursue the agenda, labelling some of its opponents in derogatory terms such as trans exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), being people whose views on gender identity were considered hostile to transgender people, or who opposed social and political policies designed to be inclusive of transgender people. In response, on 1 April 2019 the Greens announced its transgender support plan.

Also during 2019 Victorian unionist and Greens activist Linda Gale wrote a 3-page paper for a state council workshop on the transgender issue, in which she argued that the rights of trans women may infringe on those of people born female (Gale 2019). Her paper included the following:

All of the above would come to pass, and debate shut down amidst increasing instances of accusations of transphobia within the party, and expulsion of long-standing party members. Gale's discussion paper was a normal part of the Greens deep-seated internal discussion and open debate process. It did not appear to raise much concern at the time amongst the broader party membership. However, it was greeted by trans activists, both inside the party and out, with disdain, outrage and an aggressive push back. Gale was immediately labelled transphobic. She and her supporters were not transphobic, by any reasonable assessment at that time. The trans activists became more vocal, and in March 2022 accused the party of transphobia. The Greens were horrified by such an accusation, priding itself as being an active supporter of gender diversity and the transgender movement. In seeking to appease the transgender community and associated negative media, on 31 March 2022 Greens leader Adam Bandt tweeted:

Trans rights are non negotiable. Gender affirming healthcare saves lives and should be free on Medicare. I'm proud to be in solidarity with our trans friends and colleagues every day, and I'll continue to fight for you.

Despite this, the following day The Age ran the headline: Trans activists accuse the Greens of being anti-trans and transphobic. It was unclear exactly what Bandt's statement meant, but it reinforced the dictum that debate inside the party would be shut down in order to appease trans activists.

Gale was apparently not alone in the Greens in regard to her concerns, and there appeared to be a split therein along age lines. As a consequence, on 18 June the Sydney Morning Herald informed the public that Gale had been removed from the leadership position by young Victorian parliamentary leader Samantha Ratnam, after fellow Greens at the local and federal level, including Senator Rice, had called her appointment and position untenable unless she retracted her statements, which she would not do (Tuohy 2022). Turmoil ensued.

A significant addition to the debate came on 21 June 2022 from co-founder of the Australian Greens, Drew Hutton, in support of Gale and New South Wales solicitor Anna Kerr, deploring the 'authoritarian and anti-democratic' nature of the party's actions and supporting the women's rights issue:

I believe in full human rights for trans people at the same time as supporting the right of women to be safe from patriarchal oppression. I am also prepared to say these things publicly. Unfortunately, in the Greens at present that would seem to make me a 'transphobe' and already one state convenor has been sacked and one member in another state expelled for stating much the same thing. This is authoritarian and anti-democratic and I call for saner voices to be heard on this issue. If not, let me know when my expulsion from the Greens begins, will you?

Following criticism of his stance, on 24 June Hutton substantially expanded on his comments in a Facebook posting. On 25 August New South Wales Greens leader Damiya Anne Hayden apologized after accusing Gale and Rohan Leppert of Melbourne City Council of transphobia in a letter sent on 19 June on behalf of the New South Wales Greens. The apology only came following the Victorians threaten of defamation action (Leppert 2022). Later that year, on 17 December, Bandt and the federal Greens discussed expelling the Victorian branch if it "did not take the issue seriously and address concerns of the transgender community." Of course, Bandt's statement reflects the failure to realise that the Greens had overstepped the mark in doing just that. As a result, on 22 December 2022 the Victorian Greens set up a panel to investigate and further sanction perceived transphobia in its ranks. Arising out of this, on 17 April 2023 a Ballarat Greens activist quit the party after attending the Melbourne Let Women Speak rally the previous month. A week later, on 23 April, The Age reported that the Victorian Greens state council had passed a new policy expanding the definition of transphobia. It stated:

Transphobia [is] the vilification of trans people; intentionally misgendering people individually or as a group; denying that non-binary genders exist; or “promoting the unnecessary prioritisation of sex characteristics above gender”.

Of course the last element - “promoting the unnecessary prioritisation of sex characteristics above gender” - is the accepted norm amongst modern society and cannot be reasonably denied, thereby implying that each and every person who believes an accepted, science-based truth, is transphobic.

The party’s new rules also went beyond the issue of women's rights and the use of language, into the unstated and undefined impacts of transitioning upon children, young people, and the resultant trauma for family and friends. They stated that “advocating for unnecessary restrictions on transition care” and “asking leading questions that cover for doing one of the above” can constitute transphobia. This was seen as a clear case of internal party censorship of open and informed debate within the party. The Age confirmed that the Victorian Greens had limited policy debate amongst members by expanding the definition of transphobia. As stated above, the actions outlined here are similar to those taking place in political parties around Australia, and beyond, where the transgender issue has been set into party policy. It reinforced, and therefore supported, clearly discriminatory practices, specifically in regards to women and young people.

Gale was in turn subject to continuing party sanction and brought before an official dispute committee in May 2023.

The present situation, whereby the Australian Greens party has two significant policies in conflict, is untenable in the opinion of the present author. On one hand they have a long-standing policy on Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women and Girls, which seeks to remove discrimination against females. Yet, on the other hand, there is the aforementioned Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Intersex Policy which has been shown to clearly discriminate against women and young people.

In addition to the Linda Gale episode, Tasmanian members of the Greens had a fiery encounter with Posie Parker during her Australian visit. At the Hobart rally on 22 March 2023, Parker referred to parents who encourage and facilitate the chemical and medical transitioning of their young sons or daughters as "groomers", due to her strong position on the long-term deleterious effects of such action. In attendance at the rally, in opposition to it, was Tasmanian Greens MP Cassy O'Connor. She has a transgender son Jasper Lees (born female) and is married to Greens senator Nick McKim. The senator rose in parliament the following day and angrily blasted Parker over the comments. A Twitter storm ensued, involving Parker and Lees, focusing around the medical aspects of female transitioning. McKim also mentioned a certain Kimberley Allen "deadnaming" his son-in-law on Twitter and "deliberately misgendering" him.

There are no winners in such heated confrontations, especially when politics and ideology clash with the personal in a single instance such as this, and neither side can, or will, back down.

Woke Cinema, Pauline Hanson's Please Explain, 27 May 2023, duration: 2.11 minutes.

As of writing, the Australian Greens remain committed to the transgender agenda they have supported to date, with no sign of altering their position to accommodate concerns raised, both within and outside the party.

Liberal Party of Australia: Moira Deeming MP

Posie Parker's visit to Melbourne on 18 March 2023 was supported by Moria Deeming MP, a member of the Liberal Party of Australia, with an office in the Victorian Parliament House. Following the event, during which Deeming spoke, the leader of the party John Pesutto implemented a process to have her expelled from the Victorian branch on the party. Deeming held true to her beliefs regarding the negative impact of the transgender agenda on women's rights. Included below is a report on the matter by right-wing commentator and former Liberal staffer, Peta Credlin, wherein she outlines how Deeming pushed back hard against the extraordinary accusations of being a Nazi supporter (her family were in fact Jewish victims of the Holocaust) and the threat of expulsion from the party - a threat which was eventually amended to a 9 month suspension. On 12 May Pesutto finally expelled Deeming from the party, following her threat to launch a defamation action against him for failure to follow through on their initial agreement to publically exonerate her.

Moira Deeming's speech to Liberal Party brought the room to tears, Peta Credlin, Sky News Australia, 27 March 2023.

The Australian Greens party and Liberal Party of Australia examples reveal the state of turmoil present in political parties around the world over the transgender issue. In the United States the blame for the negative impacts upon groups such as women and children and young people is being put on the so-called Woke Left. Yet the various processes put into place therein over the last decade were done so with broad political and corporate sector support, as was and is the case in Australia. The Left and the Right, and everything in between is to blame, though sections of the Left have been the most vociferous and active in pushing and supporting the transgender agenda. It now appears that as more members of the general public become aware of some of the surrounding issues, especially in regards to the treatment of children and young people, and women's rights, that pressure will be brought to bear on all political parties to return to a more medically sound and non-discriminatory path for the transgender movement.

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1. Cause for concern?

During the early 2020s a number of issues arose which caused the writer - a former Greens federal member of parliament - to question the direction the party was heading in, and some of the policy decisions being made. These were primarily around the subjects of Covid-19 and Transgenderism. However, the complexity of the issues meant that aspects of these concerns went to the heart of how the party had traditionally operated, and how it was operating over the previous decade. A party which emphasised openness, concensus decision making, and adherence to four guiding principles, could be said to be seen to be straying from the course. The following commentary highlights some of the concerns held by the writer, and which had not been addressed by the party due to the very fact that openness and accountability was no longer a core action. Instead, censoring of members, secrecy, and punitive actions against perceived transgressors was becoming the new normal.

It should be noted that the writer is a member of the Australian Greens and presents this information on the basis that there is no method of bringing it before the party without being censored in the process. All political parties operate in this manner to a degree, as they seek to minimise damage to the brand and keep any such conflicts internal. The writer is aware of this, and has generally sought to minimise any negativity arising from such comments. However, a recent article dealing with the Australian and Queensland branches mistreatment of Greens co-founder Drew Hutton has forced the writer to speak out.

The Greens operates according to four core values:

Ecological sustainability
Social justice
Grassroots democracy
Peace and non-violence

It is in the areas of #2 and #3 that issues have arisen. Grassroots democracy has been replaced in part by advancement of vested interest; social justice has been replaced in part by adherence to non-core Greens policy and practice. The first was seen in the advancement of the transgender agenda from the mid' 2010s. The second was seen in the slavish adherence to the COVID-19 process as rolled out by the United States and United Kingdom, with Australia in lock-step. Both have resulted in negative outcomes which were both foreseeable and also in some instances ignored. There were also positives, which could nevertheless have been achieved without a negation of tradition Greens critical assessments before, during and after implementation.

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2. Transgenderism

There are two significant issues of concern here, and they do not concern the general support of trans people to exist without discrimination. They are the following:

* The rights of women and the resultant harm

* The harm to children and young people

Both of these are highly contentious and have given rise to numerous individuals who generally support the transgender movement being declare transphobic and subsequently cancelled.

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3. COVID-19

The manner in which the party failed to a adopt a critical approach to the roll-out of the pandemic program by governments around the world during 2019-2023, especially in regards to the dangerous use of untested vaccines and the lock-down process. Generally, science was censored and, as a result, lives were lost and people suffered, and continue to suffer to the present day.

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4. From accountability to autocracy

Political parties, as they expand, become more focussed on continuing in that direction, often at the expense of policy development and openness and accountability. This is similar to large organisations which seek to develop a so-called brand, and then protect that brand from negative perceptions by the wider community. As they have more to loose, they tighten control within the organisaton and party. Of course, this can have a negative impact upon the very foundation of the organisation as its insularity disables critical comment and the need to keep pace with contemporary views. For a commercial organisation it can affect profit; for a political party it can affect votes and support. For both it can be disastrous.

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1. Whose side are you on?

On 18 March 2023 a Let Women Speak rally was held on the steps of Parliament House, Melbourne, Australia. The title was telling. It came after almost a decade during which identity politics held increasing sway amongst Leftist politics and gender fluidity entered the realm of everyday life, at all levels of society, reinforced by law, medical practice, Big Pharma, and educational programs. The driver was the post gay marriage initiatives promoted by former LGBT organisations such as Stonewall to pursue an expanded and radical transgender agenda

As part of this new agenda, men could now define themselves as women, and vice versa, and claim discrimination if anyone should disagree; and radical medical interventions, supported by a mandated affirmation process, resulted in the medical and chemical mistreatment of children. Men were now allowed in women's sports, women's toilets, safe spaces, hospital wards and other traditionally women-only places and organisations. Needless to say, women of all ages - from young girls through to the elderly - were appalled, and frightened by this. The new language Nazis also imposed restrictions on what words could be spoken in public, and words written, in regards to sex and gender and related matters, with punitive measures put in places for breaches, including a new process called cancelling, or even imprisonment in countries such as Great Britain. Censorship of speech and even thought took place and, as a result, by the early 2020s women began to push back, giving rise to the Let Women Speak movement. This movement was called transphobic by supports of the radical transgender agenda, and transgender women (i.e., men) began to attend the in protest, with their post-puberty testosterone-driven aggressive behaviour resulting in physical violence against the peaceful, largely female protestors. It was ugly in the extreme, unprecedented, and painful to watch for many in society who could not understand why this was happening at all.

As a result of events during and associated with that March 2023 rally in Melbourne, Australian Greens members of parliament accused the rally organisers of association with local neo-Nazi organisations. Following the rally, Victorian Greens activist Linda Gale published on a Greens-related discussion site a critique of the party's action in following the distorted media reporting and associating the Let Women Speak rally with the neo-Nazis, plus going further to cite it as an anti-trans rally (National Tribune 2022). Gale would ultimately pay a heavy price for speaking out in this way in support of the women's rights movement by being sacked from her senior position in the party (refer detailed account below). The present writer could only wonder at how a women's rights rally could be so castigated in the Australian parliaments by the Greens, who had a long and proud traditional of supporting women's rights. Attempts to answer this question are to be found in the following discussion, though incredulity at the various actions by the party and some members remains.

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2. The Linda Gale case

How did we get to the place outlined above? The first Children's Gender Clinic appeared in the United States in 2007, following the opening of one in The Netherlands as early as 1987. However, the recent international move towards an expansion of transgender rights and chemical and medical interventions can be traced back to the mid 2010s, with a likely profiteering motive from the medical and pharmaceutical sector one of the drivers for the imposition of a new cultural norm in mostly Western society (Bilek 2023).

The Australian Greens, as a traditional Left-wing party, though with an environmental focus, was amongst those supporting the evolving transgender agenda from its earliest days, along with similar parties in Great Britain, Europe and the United States. For example, following on an earlier speech given to note the Transgender Day of Remembrance on 20 November 2015, on 22 December Australian Greens Senator Janet Rice, whose child was trans, asked a question in an Australian Senate Estimates Committee about improved access through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) to puberty blockers for young people who identified as transgender. She highlighted in her question concerns over high suicide rates amongst this cohort, implying that freer access to the drugs would lower the suicide rates. There was no body of clinical evidence for this statement and it would be used over the next decade to force parents into consenting to allowing transitioning treatments to be undertaken upon their children. This included the use of puberty blockers, sex hormones (testosterone for girls and estrogen for boys) and surgical treatments such as mastectomies, hysterectomies, castrations and cosmetic surgeries.

The response in part to Senator Rice's question mentioned the use of testosterone for young females. This was an early pointer to the trans-active stance which would appear in coming years, and which would become part of every major Western political party. It also subsequently flowed over into the operations of government and the judiciary.

As evidence of this, during the latter part of the 2010s the Australian Greens developed their Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Intersex Policy, and sought to accommodate the transgender sector in response to calls by trans activists around the country for a more proactive position by political parties.

In 2017 a breakaway trans-supportive group within the Victorian Greens set up a Facebook site entitled Greens Voters Against SWERFs and TERFs in the Victorian Greens. It sought to more aggressively pursue the agenda, labelling some of its female opponents in derogatory terms such as TERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist), SWERF (sex-worker exclusive radical feminist), transphobic (any person who is in any way critical of any aspect of the radical transgender agenda ) and CIS (a person who adheres to their sex identified at birth) - all of whom being people whose views on gender identity were considered hostile to transgender people, or who opposed social and political policies designed to be inclusive of transgender people.

In response, on 1 April 2019 the Greens announced its transgender support plan. Also during 2019 Victorian unionist and Greens activist Linda Gale wrote a 3-page paper for a state council workshop on the transgender issue, in which she argued that the rights of trans women may infringe on those of people born female (Gale 2019). Her paper included the following:

If the purpose of this workshop is to develop a proposal for a State Council decree that statements such as ‘There are two sexes,’ ‘The science is not conclusive,’ ‘This is an active debate in feminism,’ ‘Shutting down debate is censorship,’ or ‘Trans women aren’t the same as biological women,’ are banned within the Greens and would constitute behaviour worthy of censure, suspension or expulsion, this is totally contrary to a Greens ethos which encourages robust debate and the development of policy based on real evidence. All of the above would come to pass, and debate shut down amidst increasing instances of accusations of transphobia within the party, and expulsion of long-standing party members. Gale's discussion paper was a normal part of the Greens deep-seated internal discussion and open debate process. It did not appear to raise much concern at the time amongst the broader party membership. However, it was greeted by trans activists, both inside the party and out, with disdain, outrage and an aggressive push back. Gale was immediately labelled transphobic. She and her supporters were not transphobic, by any reasonable assessment at that time. The trans activists became more vocal, and in March 2022 accused the party of transphobia. The Greens were horrified by such an accusation, priding itself as being an active supporter of gender diversity and the transgender movement. In seeking to appease the transgender community and associated negative media, on 31 March 2022 Greens leader Adam Bandt tweeted: Trans rights are non negotiable. Gender affirming healthcare saves lives and should be free on Medicare. I'm proud to be in solidarity with our trans friends and colleagues every day, and I'll continue to fight for you. Despite this, the following day The Age ran the headline: Trans activists accuse the Greens of being anti-trans and transphobic. It was unclear exactly what Bandt's statement meant, but it reinforced the dictum that debate inside the party would be shut down in order to appease trans activists.

Despite Bandt's statement, the trans activist opposition did not go away, especially when Gale rose in the ranks of the Victorian Greens. It came to a head once again when, on 11 June 2022, Gale was elected to the leadership position of Convenor of the Victorian Greens. A controversy immediately ensued over her 2019 paper and women's rights stance, led by trans activists, many of whom were members of the Greens. The party could be said to have, as a result, panicked, rather than consider the accusations with the normal degree of even-handedness and intellectual rigor. Gale was apparently not alone in the Greens in regard to her concerns, and there appeared to be a split therein along age lines. As a consequence, on 18 June the Sydney Morning Herald informed the public that Gale had been removed from the leadership position by young Victorian parliamentary leader Samantha Ratnam, after fellow Greens at the local and federal level, including Senator Rice, had called her appointment and position untenable unless she retracted her statements, which she would not do (Tuohy 2022). Turmoil ensued.

A significant addition to the debate came on 21 June 2022 from co-founder of the Australian Greens, Drew Hutton, in support of Gale and New South Wales solicitor Anna Kerr, deploring the 'authoritarian and anti-democratic' nature of the party's actions and supporting the women's rights issue:

Following criticism of his stance, on 24 June Hutton substantially expanded on his comments in the following Facebook posting:

Drew Hutton, Facebook, 24 June 2022.

On 25 August New South Wales Greens leader Damiya Anne Hayden apologized after accusing Gale and Rohan Leppert of Melbourne City Council of transphobia in a letter sent on 19 June on behalf of the New South Wales Greens. The apology only came following the Victorians threaten of defamation action (Leppert 2022). Later that year, on 17 December, Bandt and the federal Greens discussed expelling the Victorian branch if it "did not take the issue seriously and address concerns of the transgender community." Of course, Bandt's statement reflects the failure to realise that the Greens had overstepped the mark in doing just that. As a result, on 22 December 2022 the Victorian Greens set up a panel to investigate and further sanction perceived transphobia in its ranks. Arising out of this, on 17 April 2023 a Ballarat Greens activist quit the party after attending the Melbourne Let Women Speak rally the previous month. A week later, on 23 April, The Age reported that the Victorian Greens state council had passed a new policy expanding the definition of transphobia. It stated:

Of course the last element - “promoting the unnecessary prioritisation of sex characteristics above gender” - is the accepted norm amongst modern society and cannot be reasonably denied, thereby implying that each and every person who believes an accepted, science-based truth, is transphobic.

The party’s new rules also went beyond the issue of women's rights and the use of language, into the unstated and undefined impacts of transitioning upon children, young people, and the resultant trauma for family and friends. They stated that “advocating for unnecessary restrictions on transition care” and “asking leading questions that cover for doing one of the above” can constitute transphobia. This was seen as a clear case of internal party censorship of open and informed debate within the party. The Age confirmed that the Victorian Greens had limited policy debate amongst members by expanding the definition of transphobia. As stated above, the actions outlined here are similar to those taking place in political parties around Australia, and beyond, where the transgender issue has been set into party policy. It reinforced, and therefore supported, clearly discriminatory practices, specifically in regards to women and young people.

Gale was in turn subject to continuing party sanction and brought before an official dispute committee in May 2023.

There are no winners in such heated confrontations, especially when politics and ideology clash with the personal in a single instance such as this, and neither side can, or will, back down. As of writing, the Australian Greens remain committed to the transgender agenda they have supported to date, with no sign of altering their position to accommodate concerns raised, both within and outside the party.

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Linda Gale was never suspended. Instead, she was "cancelled" in the context which in that word sits as of 2022 and beyond. Step one in that process was the politically motivated Administrative Panel decision by the Victorian Greens that the election of Gale as head of the Victorian Greens was invalid and that the position was to be thrown open again. Gale nominated once more, but as this took place just before a state election - which is seen as never a good time to reveal party internal dissent - she was subject to a lot of pressure not to run. In the end, Gale withdrew her nomination before the ballot. Following this, she has continued to be subjected to a "cancelling" process which is evident in a number of forms:

(1) a series of misconduct allegations - none of which have been substantiated;

(2) a unilateral public statement by State Council condemning her, and;

(3) a Panel of Inquiry process.

The latter was specially invented to sustain the personal and ideological attack towards Gale and Rohan Leppert for their supposed thought crimes, given that the misconduct panel had failed to find either of them guilty of anything.

The Panel of Inquiry also failed to find any evidence of wrongdoing, but embarrassingly was critical of both Greens Member for Wills Samantha Ratnam and Greens LGBTI spokesperson and Victorian Senator Janet Rice, for the way they had recklessly whipped up distress amongst trans party members by saying that Rohan and Gale were transphobic. Such an accusation was nothing less than disgraceful, in the view of the present writer, and to an obvious, though limited, degree amongst the Panel of Inquiry members.

This whole episode has proven both a nightmare for Gale and Ratnam, and a blight on the party. As this is written (March 2025) it remains in place, with no end in sight.

In Victoria the party rules do not allow for indefinite suspension, but in reality this is the outcome so far. Instead of official suspension, Gale has been subject to a misconduct investigation which is rehashing all the old ‘allegations’ previously dismissed, and which has been going on for at least two years. [NB: The present writer is obviously unaware of the precise facts behind there actions and processes as they are shrouded in party secrecy. Nevertheless the present scenario has been gleaned from various news media reports].

The Star Chamber nature of this process and surrounding events includes the fact that Gale and others are bound by confidentiality until the investigation is completed, with no specific time-frame in place. This is clearly discriminatory and one could even suggest illegal. So while Gale remains a party member, she is effectively denied the right to comment on this issue, or make public statements on the fact of here own innocence. This clearly appears to be discriminatory and a lack of just and due process. The writer would welcome any move towards openness and accountability in this regards by the Greens.

Whilst, in the view of the present writer and, I suspect Linda Gale, there is a firm conviction that the Greens are the best available party and that the climate can’t wait for the gender wars to be over, it is been stated to the present writer by present and former Greens members and supporters that they are finding it increasingly hard to give energy, money and time to a party that invests its energy, money and time into bullying one of its most important, valuable and experienced members, and in specifically trashing Linda Gale's reputation.;

The recent Saturday Paper statements by Greens co-founder Drew Hutton, support this view. Also, statement by his fellow Greens co-founder Bob Brown adds to the concerns:

“There should be a meeting point here. We’ve got real, active transphobia and discrimination going on in the world, and we need to be putting our energy into that.”

As a fellow long-standing member of the Greens, and a former member of the Federal parliament as the first Greens elected to the House of Representatives as the Member for Cunningham (2002-2004), the writer states his support for Linda Gale and Rohan Leppert in their legitimate criticism of the Victorian Greens actions, arising, it could be said, out of the original statement by Greens leader Adam Bandt - a Victorian - that "Trans rights are non-negotiable" and that ANY consensus-seeking analysis of the party's action in development and implementation of policy in this area, especially where it conflicts with the Women's Policy and the "do no harm" moral and ethical obligation we all have towards children, is deemed to be evidence of transphobia.

This accusation of transphobia is false and immensely hurtful at a personal level. It is a cheap shot often presented as the first step in the "cancelling" process. Once made, there is no avenue for redress, and no apologies given. The human rights of each and every individual are precious. However, a blanket statement that Trans rights override all other rights, or are in some more precious than others, is nothing less than a replication of the "All Animals are Equal; but some are More Equal than others" quote from Animal Farm, and which statement sits so uncomfortably with all of us, especially where aspects of compassion are concerned.

The vilification and "cancelling" of individuals, censorship of open debate and denial of the concensus imperative, and abandonment of due process within the party must cease.

------------------------

"Trans rights are non-negotiable...."

3. Rights

When Adam Bandt, the leader of the Australian Greens, stated in March 2022 that "Trans rights are non-negotiable", following on active support of the transgender agenda since the early 2010s, the present writer - a long-time member of the Greens and former parliamentary representative - was taken aback, with a somewhat uneasy feeling about the breadth of the statement and its precise implications (Bandt 2022). In rightly supporting the rights of Trans people not to suffer discrimination, of any form, this statement appeared on the surface to simply be an extension of the rights of every individual. However, by the time it was made it had become clear that the statement reflected something different, and that something different was causing concern right across the political spectrum.

The depth of concern from Bandt's perspective was revealed a month later when he cast aside concerns over negative impacts upon women, and pointed to his understanding that: Nearly half of young transgender women have reported [they have] attempted suicide (Strudwick 2014). Therefore, people's rights to exist should not be the fodder of election campaigns (Rollason 2022). To Bandt, it was a matter of life or death, and gender affirming healthcare was one of the means at averting such tragedy. Numerous studies have found high attempted suicide rates amongst transgender youth, as opposed to youth in general, and this has driven much of the controversy about the adoption bym default of affirmation in dealing with the transitioning of youth. In opposition, the psychology and medical profession also calls for a return to counselling and a wait-and-see attitude to enable normal puberty and personal growth and aturing to take place - as was the norm in the past - rather than radial interventions which may or may not solve anxiety, depression and other issues connected with the child - teenage - young adult development process.

We live in a social environment; in communities where self-aggrandizement and narcissism are abhorred, as are instances of one group subverting the rights of another; where respect for those around us is the ideal, and where "All [humans] are equal" and not, as in George Orwell's Animal Farm, "some [humans] are more equal than others." With a long-held core belief in equality, the writer knew there was something wrong with Bandt's statement, but did not have the necessary philosophical, ideological or experiential background to precisely describe what it was.

In 2022 the writer was not informed regarding the precise detail of the Trans movement which had come to prominence during the mid' 2010s, following the success of the gay marriage campaign. It was only around April 2023 that a deep dive was taken into understanding the issue and forming a personal view based on a reading of both sides of the debate. That deep dive revealed the complexity of the arguments; the divisions forming in society over the issue; the intensity of feelings on all sides; and the broader societal implications.

Bandt repeated the statement in a Facebook posting during November 2024, whilst also expanding upon it (Bandt 2024). By that stage the writer was concerned about two specific aspects of the Transgender agenda, namely the negative impacts upon women and children, but still could not adequately connect that with the unease regarding the statement. However, that changed during March 2025 when a YouTube presenter made the following comment:

All rights have corresponding duties and responsibilities...

Eureka! Trans rights were no different than all other rights. For example, all humans, including those of diverse gender identity, have the duty and responsibility to Do No Harm to their fellow human beings. In regards to the Trans issue, this has special application to women and children, because:

(1) the Trans movement harms children in its pursuit of gender affirming healthcare, which gives rise to the use of cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers and radical surgeries such as mastectomies, castrations and other body altering treatments. All of these have negative physical impacts upon recipient, including the early onset of osteoporosis in women and sterilisation. Negative psychological impacts can also be profound. Transitioning should only take place when an individual is an adult and can make their own informed decision about such matters.

(2) the Trans movement declared that woman are men and men are woman and that sex is to be replaced in all instances by perceived gender identity. This resulted in men in women's sports, prisons, hospital wards, toilets, safe spaces, etc. It severely diminished the hard fought rights of women to be identified as women, thereby negating the gains of the feminist movement since the 1960s. It was completely at odds with all those female-based affirmative action gains. The fact is, there are two sexes: male and female. A trans woman is a male presenting as a female, and not an actual woman. A trans man is a female presenting as a male, and not an actual male.

Trans rights, like all other rights, therefore have the corresponding duty and responsibility to not harm children, and not diminish or do harm to women. Therefore trans rights, like all other rights, are negotiable.

------------------------

4. References

Bandt, Adam, Trans rights are non-negotiable, Twitter / X, 29 March 2022. Text: Trans rights are non negotiable. Gender affirming healthcare saves lives and should be free on Medicare. I'm proud to be in solidarity with our trans friends and colleagues every day, and I'll continue to fight for you.

-----, Trans rights are non-negotiable, Facebook, 17 November 2024. Text: Trans rights are non negotiable. Trans and gender diverse communities are strong and resilient, but we know they face disproportionate levels of harassment, abuse and violence. Trans and gender diverse people also face worse outcomes in accessing work, housing, healthcare, legal protections and more. Supporting trans people means investing in public and affordable housing. Supporting trans people means breaking down barriers to accessing gender affirming care. Supporting trans people means raising all income support payments above the poverty line. Supporting trans people means calling out transphobic rhetoric wherever it exists. Today and everyday the Greens are committed to celebrating trans and non-binary people. We will fight for stronger, expanded protections for trans and non-binary people. Discrimination and hate have no place in our community.

Rollason, Bridget, Greens leader Adam Bandt accuses Prime Minister Scott Morrison of trying to weaponize transgender debate for election campaign, ABC, 13 April 2022.

Strudwick, Patrick, Nearly half of young transgender people have attempted suicide – UK survey, The Guardian, 20 November 2014.

------------------------

Michael Organ, Australia

Last updated: 23 March 2025

5. References

Greens leader Adam Bandt accuses Prime Minister Scott Morrison of trying to weaponize transgender debate for election campaign, Australian Broadcasting Commission, 13 April 2022.

Hutton, Drew, 'Transgender cult' purges Greens of its true believers [commentary], The Australian, 22 July 2025.

Ison, Sarah, Activist [Tina Kordrostami] quits the Greens in disgust, The Australian, 19-20 July 2025.

Left wing will always eat its own [editorial], The Australian, 22 July 2025.

Lever, Candy, Parents vs Trans Activists - Through the looking glass, Weekend Magazine, The Australian, 19-20 July 2025.

Middap, Christine, The teenage who divorced her family, The Australian, 26-27 July 2025.

Rise, Stephen, Activist quits Greens over Mid-East stance, The Australian, 19-20 July 2025.

Spooner, John, Deep Green Mugger [cartoon], The Australian, 22 July 2025.

Walker, Jamie, Generation of kids being experimented on in ways that are completely unacceptable, The Australian, 26-27 July 2025.

----- and Marcus de Blonk Smith, Testing the waters: Greens leader backs party purge to enforce transgender zeal, The Australian, 22 July 2025.

-----, I took on Joh, now I'll take on the Greens, The Australian, 26 July 2025.

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Transgender agenda : Bibliography | Issues | Peace Plan | Non-negotiable Rights |

Last updated: 22 July 2025

Michael Organ, Australia

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