Government's anti-trans bill will cost lives

The first is that transgender women do not have an inherent advantage when it comes to sport.

The second is that the type of politics this government is engaging in will kill people.

Proponents of the bill will put forward myriad arguments based off nothing more than fear and ignorance that trans women will dominate any competition they set foot in, leaving cisgender women in their wake. They will, and do, argue that people will transition purely to achieve sporting goals they couldn't previously. Both show a horrible understanding of what being trans involves, and insults athletes the world over with the idea that natural size, speed, strength or endurance is everything, and hard work counts for nothing.

Of the few notable trans female athletes in the spotlight, all were already competing at an elite level prior to their transition. New Zealand's Olympic weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, who placed last at Tokyo 2020, was setting national records in the men's division pre transition. Lia Thomas was already swimming at an elite collegiate level. And personally, I had already represented Australia for a number of years as a handball player, including at the World Championships and at qualification events for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. To date, they are the only examples of trans athletes we have to draw on who have competed at these levels. Hardly a wave of domination.

Despite the arguments that will be made, there has never been an athlete who was an average club level competitor who then shot to the top of elite sport post-transition. And it won't happen. There are simply too many other factors that go into creating high-level athletes - work ethic chief amongst them.

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To highlight the hypocrisy of those who would support this bill, it has been largely accepted that testosterone suppression in intersex athletes, such as Caster Semenya, is more than sufficient to create a level playing field. When the same information is applied to trans athletes, many of the same people who support this finding will suddenly have you believe the science isn't there yet. So, which is it? You can't have it both ways, but the transphobes out there will try to make you believe you can.

The real issue is the weaponisation of the conversation around trans people and their place in society. Trans people are some of the most marginalised in the world, and it is impossible not to notice the similarities between the conversation around trans people in 2022 and the gay community in the 1980s. Fear and ignorance is fuelling hate and division, and if we are to learn from history, it will cost lives. We are still now seeing murderers brought to justice for the hate crimes perpetrated against gay men in the '80s, and it is not a stretch to imagine we will see the same crimes committed against trans people today. And that is not to say anything about the number of gay people lost to suicide, driven to that point by alarmist and hateful messaging from politicians and sections of the media, both during and after the height of the AIDS epidemic.

In 2017, Perth's Telethon Kids Institute surveyed 859 trans people aged between 14 and 25. 48 per cent of them reported having attempted suicide at least once in their lives. This isn't because trans people are any more predisposed to mental health issues - it's because of the way they are treated.

If it were any other group in our community, these numbers would be cause for immediate action. Instead, we have a government hell-bent on weaponising transphobia for electoral gain, regardless of the potential consequences.