Bills

Births, Deaths and Marriages (Gender Identity) Amendment Bill

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 2 November 2016.)

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (12:00): I rise to give a contribution on this new, improved and amended Births, Deaths and Marriages (Gender Identity) Amendment Bill 2016, and to briefly go through the two changes that have been made from the previous bill that was defeated in this house not that long ago. Those two changes are to move from the age of 16 to 18, the two different pathways by which people can seek to change their birth certificate, to change their sex or now, as we are expanding the definition, to include gender identity. The second thing that has changed in this bill is around who can access the information. That has been changed and it has just further clarified what I think was already potentially the aim and, as I am given to understand, will mirror the changes to be made in the parentage presumptions legislation that passed in this place earlier this year.

Interestingly, neither of those concerns addresses my central concerns. I am happy to lay out here this afternoon my complete position so that the house can understand it, given that this bill is likely to be quite tightly contested. Increasing the age from 16 to 18 is something that the proponents have done to try to garner more support for this bill but, in fact, works against my central understanding and the central concerns that I have.

Primarily those concerns are that there is evidence to suggest that in the vast majority of children who experience gender dysphoria at a prepubescent age, it essentially disappears or dissipates, or works its way through by the time the child hits puberty. Given that we are talking about some fairly permanent steps in terms of hormone therapy, in terms of surgery, and in terms of going through a counselling process to have a child consider the ability to change their sex or gender, I still do not agree that prepubescent children should be allowed to do that.

Given that the vast majority of children go through puberty by the time they are 16 I am more than happy for 16 to 18 year olds to be able to access the easier method that has been proposed now for 18 and up, which is getting signed off by a doctor and going to the registrar as opposed to having to go through a court process.

I am putting on the record that I will be voting for the second reading because I think we have now understood and fleshed out these issues well enough to have that debate on those few key issues in the committee stage. However, I am flagging that I will be voting against clause 29J which provides the process for under 18 year olds to have access via a magistrate and, obviously with the consent of their parents, to get their birth certificate changed. I will be voting against that clause. For me that is a threshold issue. If the parliament in committee votes that clause down that is one step closer for me voting for the bill in its third reading.

Especially when we are widening sex to include gender—so, we are now not just talking about invasive surgery and therapy, we are now talking about a different concept, a different pathway of including gender identity and therefore a non-invasive process where a child can get counselling to decide to change their sex—given how definitive and firm a decision like this is, caution should prevail and this process should be done post puberty. I hope the parliament agrees with me.

I have this morning proposed and filed another couple of amendments in regard to my second threshold issue to support the third reading of this bill. That is around what defines clinical treatment. Under the Sexual Reassignment Act, in the definition around how much is enough treatment, the operative words used are 'is receiving' or 'has received'. In the case of surgery, there are some fairly permanent surgical procedures.

In the case of hormone therapy or taking hormone blockers, that process is ongoing, so I can understand why the Sexual Reassignment Act uses the words 'is receiving' or 'has received'. I think that makes a lot of sense. However, we are now fundamentally changing what sexual reassignment means. It is no longer sexual reassignment. We are including gender identity as a separate term and as something we are going to recognise on the birth certificate. I have fundamental issues with that but I think that that debate has been run and lost, so we will move on.

Given that we are the widening the ability of people to change their birth certificate, I think it is incumbent upon us to have a look at clinical treatment again to understand what is appropriate. My first amendment provides for a prescribed minimum period for counselling for those who are undertaking non-invasive treatment before they change their birth certificate. The report of the Legislative Review Committee states:

Heather Stokes [recommended that] any law reform option might specify that persons must be under the care of a mental health professional for a minimum period of time prior to being able to amend their birth certificate…

She went on to say that she considered that the minimum period of treatment would best be determined by medical practitioners. This amendment seeks to give effect to that minimum period that Heather Stokes talked about.

It is not necessarily up to us in this parliament to make the decision on how long that is but, if this amendment does get up, I would encourage the government, through regulation, to have that discussion with the psychiatric and psychological professions to determine a prescribed period. That helps to allay some of the fears that some people, including me, have expressed in this place around enabling someone to, for instance, have a single session, be signed off by a doctor and change their certificate, then have another single session and change back.

The reason that is operative is that, in a briefing last week in the other place, minister Hunter said to me that there is no way to close the gay marriage loophole. I felt quite vindicated by that statement because the member for Hammond and I stood up here when the last bill was before the house and brought that fact to this parliament and we received a bit of criticism for it. Many suggested that we were wrong but, indeed, we were not wrong.

It exists, and the fact is that it has actually existed under the Sexual Reassignment Act. The High Court has found that, where somebody under the old Sexual Reassignment Act 1988 reassigns, gets married and then reassigns again, that does not invalidate a marriage. In my view, if people have undergone two very difficult and painful processes to switch back and forth that take a long time, a lot of money and a lot of effort, we in this parliament should not be standing in their way.

I understand that there are difficulties. It is a difficult thing to go through and it is not up to us in that instance to make that decision, but what we are seeking to do here is no longer around invasive treatment. It is around non-invasive treatment—counselling and psychological sessions with a mental health professional. Now we are talking about a completely different thing.

Regarding my second amendment, in place of 'is receiving or has received' I did first contemplate putting in 'has completed', which means that they have to have completed a course of treatment before people are able to alter their birth certificate. That potentially works for surgery, it most definitely works for having completed the minimum prescribed period, but it potentially does not work for those who undertake hormone therapy, who never really complete. So I have changed that definition now, and in place of 'is receiving or has received' I want to substitute 'has undertaken a sufficient amount of'.

In my view, it will be doctors who make that decision, about whether someone 'has undertaken a sufficient amount of', but I think it just strengthens the wording. As this is a very serious and permanent change people are seeking to make, and given that the magistrate now no longer makes the decision around these things, it ensures that doctors are given a certain level of guidance to say, 'You need to ensure that the person you are administering clinical treatment to has undertaken a sufficient amount of treatment.'

I encourage the house to support these amendments. They are certainly not designed to kill the bill. In my view it is a sensible set of amendments that merely tries to grapple with the fact that we have fundamentally changed the nature of what the Sexual Reassignment Act was to what this Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration (Gender Identity) Amendment Bill now is, and to make sure that the new world of opportunity we have opened up is done in a responsible way, a way that can help garner confidence and support amongst the broader community for these changes.

They are my two threshold issues, new section 29J and these amendments. If the parliament is good enough to make a decision on those two then I would be more than happy, in fact I would be extremely glad, to be able to vote for this bill on the third reading, on the understanding that there is a central mischief here that we are seeking to fix, that those who are over 18 years old should not have the indignity of having to go to a magistrate in order to be able to change their sex and, in the case now of gender identity being included, that there is a broader range of people who quite probably will have greater access to being able to have a birth certificate that more accurately reflects what they know and feel in their heart.

Having voted against a second reading last time, I sought, in the way that all parliamentarians should, to gain a deeper understanding of the consequences of this bill so that we could find a way to make it work. I look forward to the support of the house in that regard, and I very much look forward to a successful third reading vote, where we can help to alleviate the suffering and confusion that a lot of people are feeling, and so that people can feel they have a parliament, a government and a society that truly understands them and where they are coming from.

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (12:13): I rise to speak to the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration (Gender Identity) Amendment Bill 2016. This is No. 171, and I note that the previous not quite identical bill, No. 142, failed in this parliament, with a tight vote of 19-all and the Speaker helping to vote it down. I have not changed my position on this legislation.

We are dealing with a suite of legislation this week on issues like this, and in the bigger picture I am concerned that we are spending a lot of time on some of this legislation when the state is in such a dire straits. We should be looking after the profitability of our state and its industries and getting on with the job. Be that as it may, I will certainly be voting against going into committee. I want to talk about a couple of bits of correspondence I have had in regards to the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration (Gender Identity) Amendment Bill. The first one states:

I am gravely concerned that if this bill is successful it will discriminate against real males and real females and will cause a far greater majority of people in South Australia to feel devalued and completely unsafe! Please vote against the Births, Deaths and Marriages (Gender Identity) Amendment Bill 2016, thank you!

This is another one that was circulated to all MPs, and I note that it is addressed to the Premier. It states:

I would like to express my concern and vote against the Births, Deaths and Marriages (Gender Identity) Amendment Bill 2016. Birth Certificates should record the biological details and parentage of a newborn, not subsequent feelings about one's own 'gender identity'.

Such a Bill would allow any biological male who identifies as female the right to access sex-specific spaces like bathrooms, domestic violence shelters and dormitories. Furthermore, the bill will provide a Trojan Horse for 'same-sex marriage' which I also disagree with, by allowing people to identify as the opposite sex in order to marry their same-sex partner.

Thank you for noting and recording my concerns.

It is interesting that someone either wrote those words about a Trojan Horse themselves or they were the words I used in my speech on the initial bill, and I note that it got some coverage. I did not say it to get coverage; I said it because it is my concern, and I note the member for Schubert's concerns in relation to this. He went to the briefing with minister Hunter from the other place and, from what he was told, this does not close out the possibility of legalising gay marriage.

As I indicated in my previous speech on this bill, we have nothing to do with marriage. We are not responsible for marriage in this country; that is the federal parliament. I acknowledge the Liberal National Turnbull government's quest to have a plebiscite on same-sex marriage, but I think that has been killed. I think it has been killed because proponents of same-sex marriage knew that it would not get up. Be that as it may, we may never know the result of that plebiscite. It is not just me making comments such as these in this house; it is people who communicate to us, and we should take note of what people send into us. The member for Schubert was talking about what happens under the Sexual Reassignment Act 1988 and said:

…reassignment procedure means a medical or surgical procedure (or a combination of such procedures) to alter the genitals and other sexual characteristics of a person, identified by birth certificate as male or female, so that the person will be identified as a person of a different sex and includes, in relation to a child, any such procedure (or combination of procedures) to correct or eliminate ambiguities in the child's sexual characteristics;

Compared with the previous bill, which collapsed in this place, there is no change to this bill. If one person in a gay couple decided, with a small amount of counselling, that they wanted to change their sex to the opposite of whatever they started with, that is fine as far as what they think, but that, in my mind, makes them eligible to marry their partner. For instance, if one person in a lesbian couple identified as a man, I would like to know what rules them out from getting married.

Members have been told in briefings that there is no way around it; that means it can happen. It is the same for two gay men if one identifies as a woman. As I said, it is not our jurisdiction to have anything to do with the Marriage Act in this place. It certainly concerns me. It concerns me that, with just counselling, people may decide to do that.

I understand where the member for Schubert wants to go, and I know that he is trying to make the best of this legislation, but in my mind I think we should just vote it down. I note that this current bill has changed where it goes through the process so that, instead of those 16 years of age and under needing parental consent for having a gender identifying change, it has now gone to 18 years; whether some listened to some of the contributions in this place, I do not know.

I mentioned the angst that could happen for parents of a child who is 16 and obviously not an adult. I know that the age of consent is 17, but they are not an adult and it could cause much angst in a home before they reach that legal age of 18, where a whole range of things come into play, like being able to serve our country and so on.

There are still concerns, and I note there are several adjustments to amendments throughout the bill. In that regard, if the bill does reach the committee stage, I will be asking some questions. I would be interested in other people's contributions, and I think we need to look at where this legislation is. It is like other legislation that comes into this place that needs to be amended multiple times, whether it be conscience votes or general legislation. I have seen it with the planning bill, where there were about 300 amendments, 200 of which were government amendments, that came through the process of the houses.

Then we see this where, in an attempt to get it through, the main amendment is around the age range for a child to go through this process, which has gone from the age of 16 to 18 years, and there are other slight changes around the recognition on certificates. At the end of the day, I will not be supporting this bill, but I acknowledge that people have different views and that it is a conscience vote in the house.

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (12:22): I rise to speak on the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration (Gender Identity) Amendment Bill 2016 and indicate that I will be supporting the same. I wish to raise a matter with respect to 29N, but let me say at the outset that we had the public and parliamentary debate in respect of gender identity and the rules that would apply for legal sexual reassignment back in the 1980s. Nearly 30 years later, it is reasonable that our committee of the parliament should revisit this matter, particularly in light of a private member's bill that was introduced, to modernise the structural and legislative arrangements around that.

The Legislative Review Committee, which reported to this parliament in April, confirmed what we all expected, that is, that there needed to be some contemporising of that process. I take no issue with the fact that there is a lawful process upon which people can register a gender with which they identify subsequent to certain events. Historically, when we had this debate in the 1980s, I was the mother of very young children myself, and it raises questions about the future of your own children.

It is fair to say that I had only sons and, to the best of my knowledge, they still want to be sons. However, we accept in our community that there are people who are trapped in the purgatory of living within a gender with which they do not feel comfortable or, indeed, feel very uncomfortable and distressed by being trapped within.

So, we have had that debate, and the thing that was identified in the Legislative Review Committee's examination of this was that there were three things that were largely outdated, inoffensive or unnecessary. They are my words, but in my view it is important to repeat them. One is that it is inappropriate that we should continue to require that a minister approve who, as medical practitioner, should undertake the sexual reassignment treatment. That, of course, was being looked at largely within the envelope of surgical treatment and some drug treatment, but largely we are talking about in modern terms the counselling and other psychological services that go with that.

It is completely unnecessary because we have medical practitioners and health professionals who work in this area who are highly regulated by their own medical boards and health professional boards and the like. It is unnecessary for that to occur, but it was new at the time and it was reasonable that it was there then, but now it needs to go. The second area was the significance of having ministerial approval of the hospitals that needed to carry this out. Just as when stem cell research and other innovative areas such as IVF were introduced, there were ethical considerations, it is important to decide now who is going to implement it and who is going to approve it. There have to be clear guidelines and a statutory process, and sometimes we need to keep that supervision.

Hospitals and health centres now are institutions which are highly regulated and similarly have a number of ethical boards from which they need to seek approval. In relation to IVF treatment, I have Repromed in my electorate. It is about the fastest growing industry in the state actually, because it seems that our young people are waiting longer to have children and have a higher demand for fertility treatment. Nevertheless, in its embryonic stage—pardon the pun—it needed to have very clear regulation and ethical standards put around it because we did not have the natural structures of revision, review and regulation within boards. That is now the case.

Finally, the requirement in the early days for anyone, adults included, who wanted to have any gender reassignment recognition had to get a magistrate's approval; that is archaic. I agree that it is archaic, and I think that it needs to be reviewed. A rewrite of this legislation, modernising it in a contemporary form, is highly necessary and it is appropriate that we deal with it. The discussion and deliberation of this has been enhanced, not only by the Legislative Review Committee's report—and I thank the members of the committee for that—but also by a number of people who have put submissions to us. I thank those members of the assisting minister's office who provided advice and material on this. I also thank the general members of the community.

More recently—this week, in fact—we have had the benefit of hearing from Ms Zoey Campbell and Ms Sarah Pinkie, who both had very different stories but gave us a very real description of some of the issues that they have to deal with. The first, Ms Campbell, told us of the difficulty of having to comply sometimes with current criteria under sexual reassignment. She highlighted to those of us who heard her presentation that simple matters like wanting to have sexual recognition but not being in a position either financially or from a health perspective to undergo full physical and surgical reassignment, or indeed being fearful of invasive surgery for transgender purposes, were impediments to those who actually undertake that course.

Obviously, it is a very individual matter for someone who wishes to be recognised but not to have to undertake physical surgery or other hormone treatment, and I think I have a greater understanding now of the importance of that and, therefore, how important it is that we deal with appropriate clinical treatment in a new light. For me, it is important that that be recognised as independent, and that ought to be supported as being adequate for the purposes of qualifying under the threshold because, of course, we still need to have a medical assessment of that—that is, a practitioner or a psychologist to certify that that has been undertaken and received.

The other very helpful and quite heart-wrenching contribution was by Ms Sarah Pinkie. Ms Pinkie has a transgender son, a really nice young man who has gone through the journey as a child, it was explained to us, feeling that he had been trapped in a female gender and that he wanted to be able to pursue life as a boy. That, obviously, can be confronting for parents and it can be confronting for the children. There are whole issues of rejection, potentially, by their immediate family and those who love them and, in fact, support them.

Remember, of course, that children are very vulnerable in these circumstances because they do not have a choice as to who else can be out there looking after them, nor are they able to look after themselves. They are children, and they are entitled to protection and support and to be able to continue that in a loving relationship. The potential fracturing of that needs to be considered. I thank them both for giving their presentations.

The government presented, via the Premier, the predecessor of this bill, and it failed. I think it failed for a number of reasons, but one reason was the insistence in that presentation of having a capacity for people under the age of 18 years (that is, between 16 and 18) to make that application without a magistrate's approval. I think that was a fatal flaw of that legislation. It never surprises me what the Premier does introduce in the parliament. He is from the old ambit claim world, I think, in his pre-legal days, and it is a matter of putting it all in there. What the Premier needs to understand is that there has to be a reasoned argument for the model of a bill brought into this parliament. It has to stack up, it has to be effective, it has to be enforceable and it has to be acceptable, not just to the parliament but to a large degree as something that the community will support.

Of course, there are very significant issues which split the community. I accept that, but that is what we are here to do, to make some hard decisions in that regard. In any event, that bill was defective. It has been amended to the extent that it has been excluded under this bill, and I think that will assist its passage, with the support of others.

The second area of concern was the question of the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages retaining the historical information which preceded the new gender recognition registration of identity being registered, for the purposes of that being retained and protected under privacy rules but still recorded. Again, I see that that was a severe defect, and I am pleased to see that the assistant minister in moving this bill has not pursued that same fault and has remedied it in this bill.

The issue I do want to raise is the question of proposed new section 29N, which is the use of an old birth certificate to deceive. I raise this because I am going to ask the assistant minister to provide to the parliament some explanation as to who wants this in the bill and why it is necessary. I have this week canvassed it with some of those who have been advocating for this reform and they say that it is not something they have asked for, nor do they have any identified reason about why it is necessary.

Last night, I spoke to Professor John Williams, who has been active in the South Australian Law Reform Institute's involvement in this area. He could not think of any reason that it needed to be there. He had not asked for it or recommended it. That does not mean it is a bad thing, but I make the point that it seems that this is something that has been translated from the old legislation without taking into account two things; one is that we have had significant advancement in relation to our discrimination laws, in particular our Equal Opportunity Act. We do not need to have this to try to provide a deterrent for a person, other than an applicant, who wants to cause mischief to somebody, and use old material. We do not need that anymore. We have that, it seems to me, in the equal opportunity law.

If this section is designed to be a deterrent by having a $10,000 fine or imprisonment for two years to keep the applicants in check, that is, to try to deter them from using their old birth certificates for a gender that they have rejected, it just seems to me ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. This bill is supposed to be providing a modern approach to the process whereby people can lawfully adopt a new gender and be recognised in the community. It is not to be a punitive sanction, in my view, so I ask the government to revisit that section.

Finally, at first blush I did not think that the member for Schubert's amendment was really necessary, but actually I think it is, because we already have to have appropriate treatment by virtue of a medical practitioner or psychologist providing that. Whether that is a sufficient amount or over a sufficient time is yet to be determined. That is going to be left up to the regulations, apparently, if it goes through. I commend him for bringing it because I think it is a key thing to say that we are not just going to go up there and accept a psychologist report that says, 'Attended for a half-hour session, he or she is fine,' tick the box and then proceed with the application to the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages.

Clearly, there is a message coming from this amendment from the member for Schubert that I think reflects, for those who say there may be a young person who might be influenced by others and may not really have made that consideration, that we still want the health professionals who are working in this area to take very seriously that responsibility to give assurance, when they give their certification, that the person has been thoroughly examined and that they understand the consequences. We all know that sometimes people will make a decision about their own future—a choice as an adult that they should be able to make—but they need to be apprised of all the consequences.

Yesterday, when I heard Ms Pinkie talk about her son having seen a documentary and then forming some fear about potential rejection of the family if he were to disclose that information, it resonated for me the significance of making sure that people understand what they could face, and how they might deal with it, so that this is a good experience going forward and they can have the life they want to have, rather than something that will plunge them into the despair that had not been brought to their attention. I commend the bill to the house, I commend the member for Schubert for giving some serious consideration to this, and I indicate that I will support bill.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON (Newland) (12:38): I rise very briefly to indicate my position on this bill. It has not actually changed a lot since we last debated a similar bill very recently, in that I will be voting against the second reading. I am deeply uncomfortable with the notion of being able to nominate (and I understand that I am paraphrasing a little bit) a gender change and say, 'This is who I am now.' I understand that I have shortened the process considerably, but I am just explaining in shorthand my reservations about it.

Ms Hildyard: I am watching you.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON: I can feel the eyes of the parliamentary secretary burning into the back of my head.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Don't look this way.

The Hon. T.R. KENYON: And the Deputy Speaker. I am getting smashed from both sides. My understanding is that this bill will go through to the committee stage. I indicate that I will be supporting the member for Schubert's amendments. I am particularly concerned with the operation of the regime for under 18s. In fact, I am deeply uncomfortable with it.

I am already, as I said, uncomfortable with the way it would operate for over 18s, but when applying that to children, essentially, I think this is such a serious decision and such a difficult decision that it is reasonable for people to have to wait until they are an adult to make up their mind. Once they are an adult, it is a far more reasonable proposition and obviously they should have some say in that. It is a far more reasonable proposition to allow them to work their way through that decision as an adult; it is different as a child.

With those few remarks indicating my support for the member for Schubert's amendments and my general opposition to the bill, I will be voting against the second reading and voting for amendments in the event that it gets passed, and then we will see what happens.

Ms HILDYARD (Reynell) (12:41): Thank you again to everybody for their contribution. Thank you to the deputy leader for her insightful and very helpful questions. I know she is very thorough when looking into these matters. I also thank the member for Schubert, the member for Hammond and the member for Newland. Whilst I do not agree with their points, I appreciate that they believe very strongly in their point of view, and I am pleased that they bring their point of view into this place and speak about it openly. Thank you to everybody who has contributed to this debate. It gives me a great deal of pleasure and also I guess relief that we are now bringing this bill back to this house. I am very pleased to speak to close the second reading stage of this debate.

This important bill introduced by our Premier, of which I now have carriage—the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration (Gender Identity) Amendment Bill 2016—forms a very important part of our government's very deep and genuine commitment to implementing the recommendations of the South Australian Law Reform Institute's work to eliminate all forms of discrimination against our LGBTIQ brothers and sisters. As I have said before, days in this place when you have the opportunity to help make life better for our fellow community members are the best days. This bill does just that, and that is why I am very proud to stand before you today and speak in favour of it.

SALRI has spoken with our community about this bill, and we hope that it broadly reflects what members of our community affected by it would like to see in our laws. As I have said in moving other bills developed as a result of the work that our government asks SALRI to undertake, the passing of this bill will only affect a small group of South Australians but, for those whom it does affect, it has a deep and significant impact on their lives and represents another step in our pathway to eliminating all forms of discrimination against South Australians and particularly our LGBTIQ brothers and sisters. As I did before in speaking to this bill, I also pay tribute to the important work of the Legislative Review Committee of this parliament.

Mr Odenwalder: Hear, hear!

Ms HILDYARD: On 12 April 2016, the committee, which clearly included the member for Little Para, released its Sexual Reassignment Repeal Bill 2014 inquiry report. This bill includes recommendations from that report as well as the SALRI report. That committee was very clear that work had to be done to change the current situation and, through this bill, we are doing just this.

The age of consent for various matters, as was mentioned in our debate about the relationships register yesterday, varies across and within jurisdictions. For example, the following Australian states and territories legislate the age of consent for sexual interaction at 16 years: the ACT, New South Wales, the Northern Territory, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia. South Australia and Tasmania set the age at 17.

In relation to medical consent laws, the South Australian Consent to Medical Treatment and Palliative Care Act 1995 allows children aged 16 and over to make medical decisions independent of their parents or guardians. Following extensive consultation with my fellow parliamentarians, two amendments have been rightly made to the original bill in preparation for its reintroduction. These changes are:

the general age for changing sex or gender identity on a birth certificate being 18 rather than 16;

for all children under 18 having to seek Magistrates Court approval before the registrar can register a change to their sex or gender identity registration (the original bill only required court approval for children under the age of 16); and

a requirement for the registrar to retain all historical information preceding a change of sex or gender identity registration and limiting access to this information.

These are issues which have a significant impact on trans people in our community. Yesterday, as mentioned by the member for Bragg, and today, transgender South Australians have been watching this debate, waiting to see whether their members of parliament will agree to recognise their true gender and how they live their lives.

Mum, Sarah Pinkie, has written to members of parliament asking for recognition for her 17-year-old son, Ethan, when she recognised that the self-harming and depression that beautiful boy had experienced because he knew he was a boy started when he was three or four years old.

Transgender woman and South Australian Rainbow Alliance president, Zoey Campbell, who is sitting in the gallery today, has also appealed to members of parliament about how this law will benefit the mental health of the transgender community in South Australia. Zoey says:

The current Sexual Reassignment Act is so restrictive that many transgender people will never be able to have their authentic selves recognised. This is a real problem and deeply hurtful. That can be because they have a wife they love like I had, or because their health doesn't permit surgery or hormone treatment, or because they can't afford treatment, or because they do not wish to undergo certain physical procedures. I am emotional about my birth certificate. When it is finally in my hands, it is entirely possible I will weep, because it will symbolise my journey and my truth.

The changes we make here today will have a deep and positive impact for members of our LGBTIQ community. It will make life easier for people who have tragically and wrongly been marginalised and oppressed for far too long. I am very proud to stand with our Premier and my colleagues and publicly state that we will not allow any members of our community to feel alienated by our laws. History shows that all progressive changes take time. The changes we are making this year are as a result of years of active community members working together to achieve results step by step.

In supporting this bill and commending it to the house, I pay tribute to the work of our LGBTIQ community, many of whom are in the gallery today, to achieve this outcome over so many years. I look forward to continuing to work alongside them to progress legislation that supports, empowers and includes all South Australians. I look forward to passing this bill as another step on the road to progress. The fights are not yet won, but each day we edge a little closer, and in passing this bill, we continue to move forward towards a community and legislation that is free of discrimination.

In closing, I again place on record my sincere thanks to those courageous community members, to SALRI for their work on this and the other bills that move us closer towards that place, to Lachlan Cibich, to Anna and Lee from the Human Rights Law Centre, and also to my staff, particularly Rhiannon Newman and Jonathon Louth.

The house divided on the second reading:

Ayes 28

Noes 16

Majority 12

There being a disturbance in the strangers' gallery:

The SPEAKER: The gallery will be quiet or I shall clear it.

Committee Stage

In committee.

Clauses 1 to 5 passed.

Clause 6.

Mr KNOLL: I move:

Amendment No 1 [Knoll–2]—

Page 4, after line 4 [clause 6, inserted section 29H]—After subsection (2) insert:

(3) For the purposes of this Part, clinical treatment constituted by counselling only cannot be regarded as a sufficient amount of appropriate clinical treatment unless the period of the counselling is equal to or greater than the prescribed period.

As I outlined in my second reading speech, this essentially provides for those who are using non-invasive treatment, so those who are seeking counselling or going to a mental health professional for treatment.

In her submission to the Legislative Review Committee, Heather Stokes stated very clearly that she thought there should be a minimum prescribed period for those people who were not going through a physical process but were seeking to use this new process. I have specifically not put a period in there because I think it is best left to the medical fraternity to discuss with the government what should be put into the regulations. I am taking it on good faith that, if this gets up, that is what will happen.

The amendment ensures that people have thought about this completely and fully, and that people undertake a prescribed course of clinical treatment when it comes to non-invasive clinical treatment. I urge the committee to support the amendment.

The committee divided on the amendment:

Ayes 27

Noes 18

Majority 9

Amendment thus carried.

Progress reported; committee to sit again.

Sitting suspended from 13:02 to 14:01.