MEDIA STATEMENT
For Immediate Release: 21 June 2026
Feminists, women’s organisations and community coalitions have united to express their opposition to the Sex Discrimination Amendment (Sex-based Rights) Bill 2026, tabled in the Federal Parliament last week by the Nationals’ Alison Penfold MP.
This is the second attempt in less than a year to weaken the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth), and it comes at a time when women’s rights are under pressure on multiple fronts, with Bills before the NSW and SA Parliaments and a disallowance motion in Queensland all seeking to limit abortion care.
Twenty organisations are raising their voices in concern about the latest attack on the Sex Discrimination Act, which seeks to limit protection to discrimination by defining men and women only by their physical characteristics, imposing a strict sex binary and allowing people to establish ‘women-only’ places and services without any justification needed.
Sally Moyle, Chair of the National Foundation for Australian Women said “For generations, feminists have been fighting for recognition of the complexity of our lives. This Bill strikes at the core of gender equality by narrowly defining women. It risks taking us back to a time when an idealised definition of ‘the woman’ only allowed us to be caregivers defined by our reproductive function, who should not own property and were not suited to leadership, capable of rational thought or physically strong.”
Dr Gemma Killen, Executive Director of the Working with Women Alliance said “The Sex Discrimination Act is the cornerstone of gender equality in Australia, and we do not want to see it weakened. We do not want a situation where women are judged as ‘not female enough’ to deserve protection or access to women-only spaces, just because they might look or sound different to the feminine stereotype.”