Submission on reform of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 (Qld)

Intersex Human Rights Australia has made a formal submission to the Queensland Human Rights Commission on reform of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 (Qld). The Act is sometimes purported to provide some protections for people with innate variations of sex characteristics via protections on grounds of gender identity. In our view, this has never been the case.

In our submission, we make 12 recommendations for reform to legislation to provide protections from discrimination and harm on the ground of sex characteristics.

The Commission’s final report was published on 1 September 2022. In response, Morgan Carpenter (author of our submission) states:

Legislation in Queensland currently provides no useful protections for people with intersex variations, and we know that individuals are subjected to discrimination and harmful practices in healthcare settings, and other settings in the State. Our submission supported the Commission’s welcome proposals to protect people with intersex variations from discrimination on grounds of sex characteristics. We are delighted that the Commission has made positive and practical recommendations in relation to sport and genetic discrimination. Given the prevalence of harmful practices such as early sterilisations and genitoplasties on children with intersex variations, we need the Queensland government to prioritise action on this issue also.

We participated in a joint statement on the release of the Commission’s recommendations.

More information

Read our submission (PDF format)
Read our submission (Word format)
More on the QHRC review of the Anti-Discrimination Act, including the discussion paper, submissions and final report
Read the joint statement by community organisations on release of the QHRC report, on the Equality Australia website.