OPINION
Over the weekend The Sunday Times published a front-page story suggesting the Western Australian government were open to the idea of parents having the option of not recording the gender of their child on birth certificates.
Except the headline actually suggested that there would be “gender free babies”, rather than the option of including less information on an official document.
Within hours the story was repeated in national media, except now rather than being ‘open to the idea’, it was actually being seriously considered, and by the time it hit international media it was part of the global move to “change societal norms”.
The initial story from The Sunday Times reported that Attorney General John Quigley was considering the move to change the rules around birth certificates as part of the government’s long promised reforms of the state’s Equal Opportunity Laws.
Wrapped up in the plans to reform the Equal Opportunity Laws in the associated promise to remove the outdated Gender Reassignment Board, something Labor committed to taking action on while in opposition back in 2017. Yes- six and half years ago.
It’s been reported that following the debacle over the Aboriginal Culture Heritage laws that were introduced in 2023 and then quickly rescinded, the government is wary of tackling any more significant law reform ahead of the 2025 state election.
Quigley has previously denied the legislation is on the backburner, and Premier Roger Cook was reassuring people the planned law reform was still a government priority when he was shaking hands and posing for selfies at Pride Fairday last November.
The claim from the newspaper that the government was considering a model similar to the one introduced in Tasmania in 2019 was made after Quigley’s office refused to rule it out as a possibility in the yet-to-be-seen legislation.
The proposal of ‘gender-free babies’ set of the readers in the comments sections, and posts on social media quickly flowed. Why aren’t statisticians complaining about data integrity they asked? How will know how many male and female people they are? These people should not be allowed children! Vote out these woke politicians who have lost their grasp of common sense and reality! Destroy the woke!
Within hours a spokesperson for John Quigley declared the idea was not being considered. “There will be no change to the way in which a child’s sex at birth is recorded or displayed on a birth certificate under any reform dealing with gender recognition,” they said.
If you’re a follower of this debate, this will not be a surprise. The government already declared it would not be changing birth certificates back in 2018 when it tabled a report from the Western Australian Law Reform Commission.
Report 108 looked into “Western Australian legislation in relation to the registration or change of a person’s sex and/or gender status relating to sex characteristics.”
The report found that Western Australia has cumbersome and outdated process for recording and changing gender. Among the report’s recommendations are the need for intersex people’s gender to be recorded as indeterminate, or to be updated at a later stage – removing the pressure on parents to ‘choose’ a gender for intersex children.
They also recommended that “Sex classification be removed from birth certificates.” and “The Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 1998 (WA) and the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Regulations 1999 (WA) be amended to expressly prohibit the recording of sex or gender on birth certificates.”
During their consultation period the Law Reform Commission heard a wide range of views on the issue, suggestions ranged from male and female being the only options, adding an indeterminate option, adding a wider range of options, giving parents the choice on whether to include gender information, and getting rid of the record all together.
It should also be noted that the proposal is about what is written on your birth certificate, there are lots of other records that are kept noting the number of male, female and intersex babies being born.
Like a similar report produced in Tasmania, that led to them changing their laws, it is noted that there are very few times in life you need your birth certificate to prove your sex. Even when you apply for a passport, you can opt to then change the details.
As they wrote in the report, “The Commission has been unable to determine circumstances in which a birth certificate is required to be produced in order to prove sex as opposed to gender.”
The real question that should be asked of the Attorney General is not – is the government considering removing the recording of sex from birth certificates? But why have they chosen to ignore the advice from experts that say we should make this change?
When the report was tabled in parliament in 2018 the Leader of the House, Sue Ellery, immediately ruled out the recommendations about removing sex from birth certificates.
“The government is yet to consider the full contents of the report, but will not be accepting recommendations 5 and 6, which are to remove and expressly prohibit the recording of sex or gender on birth certificates.” Ellery said
In 2018 the government was immediately adamant that the proposed reform would not progress, even though they were still “yet to consider the full contents of the report”. Four years later they were still mulling it over. Six years later they’re still working on it.
Why the immediate ‘no’ to the birth certificate recommendation? We’ve never been told why the expert advice is being ignored. Without a clear explanation from the government, you might assume it’s because the concept is hard to explain to people who get enraged on social media.
One thing we can take away from journey through the 24-hour news cycle is that news moves fast, and reform of outdated laws moves at a glacial pace. At the end of next week, the Labor government will have been working on law reform in this area for 2,500 days.
Graeme Watson is a co-editor of OUTinPerth, he has written about politics, news, and culture since 1998.
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