Intersex Human Rights Australia

Police checks conducted by the Northern Territory Police are in general conformity to those of other states. OII Australia has reservations nonetheless.

OII Australia does not welcome clearances being provided directly to third parties. All clearances should only be provided when application is by the individual subjected to the clearances. The applicant should be the sole recipient of the clearance. It is then up to the applicant to provide a copy or the original to the third party. If an individual does not like the information provided on a clearance they can take it up with the police or decline to provide it to the third party. This may result in the applicant not getting the job and even suspicion about the bona fides of the applicant. Certain knowledge as to why the information was not passed on remains with the applicant.

My example is this: An intersex person who has committed a notifiable crime (that does not simply mean a sex crime – see the Tasmanian response) and has also rejected their birth assignment is the subject of police check.

The crime they have committed might be so far back or so irrelevant to the work being sought – drunken assault or drug taking, reasonable for someone who suffers exclusion and vilification because of their intersex – that they would qualify despite their misdemeanours. The person reading the police check might discover that the person before them was apparently once the ‘opposite’ sex or was ‘sex weird’ and conclude that we are unsuitable on that basis. There is no protection at law for intersex against this kind of discrimination so we are, in this instance, without any opportunity of redress and on the basis of simply being intersex and not because of any crime we have committed.

Gina Wilson
President, OII Australia