Greens leader Larissa Waters backs party purge to enforce transgender zeal

The Greens’ new leader, Larissa Waters, is resisting calls to intervene in the widening row over the minority party’s embrace of transgender rights and halt a purge of members who don’t toe the line.

Former Greens member Gail Hamilton, main and top right. Top left: Greens leader Larissa Waters. Picture: Ian Hitchcock, NewsWire / Martin Ollman

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The Australian Greens’ new ­leader, Larissa Waters, is resisting calls to intervene in the widening row over the minority party’s ­embrace of transgender rights and halt a purge of members who don’t toe the line.

The expulsion of Greens co-founder Drew Hutton has brought to a dramatic head tensions around the alleged hounding of those who question the party’s pro-trans platform.

The Australian has confirmed another two cases in which longstanding members say they were drummed out for disagreeing with the policies, which include support for young people transitioning gender to control the process “with the advice and support of medical specialists”. No mention is made of parental consent.

“I was expelled for arguing that it was appropriate for the principal of a girls’ school to not enrol boys who identify as girls,” said Gail Hamilton, 55, a former state council delegate of the Queensland Greens who ran for office in Townsville on three occasions after joining in 2000.

Co-founder of the Greens, Drew Hutton with wife Libby Connors. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

“What parent wants to think their daughter is sharing a dormitory or a change room with a teenage boy? I also objected to our MPs calling women ‘uterus ­havers’ and ‘menstruators’ on the basis that it is dehumanising.

“The expulsion process felt like a kangaroo court, where I was not given the space to ­defend myself.”

Mr Hutton, who established the party in 1992 with Bob Brown, stepped up his criticism of Senator Waters, accusing her of standing by while he was denied due process and a fair hearing when her home branch in Queensland went after him.

Mr Hutton said he had backed Senator Waters’ preselection to enter parliament for the Greens at the 2010 federal election, but she failed to return his phone call when he sought her support to preserve his life membership. Senator Waters’ office declined to comment.

Mr Hutton told The Australian: “She should have intervened at the start to stop my expulsion. Instead, she went to ground, she ducked for cover. She thought this would just blow over.

“This is despite the fact that I have known Larissa for a long time. I supported her when she went for preselection. She’s somebody who should know what the issues are, especially on free speech, which is at the heart of this. She’s a lawyer.”

Senator Waters hit back, ­insisting in a statement that the decision to throw Mr Hutton out of the party was made independently “via the governance processes established by the membership and with a clear outcome. Nobody is above the rules”.

As parliament convened for the first time since the federal election, where Adam Bandt’s ­defeat in his seat of Melbourne triggered her elevation to the Greens leadership, Senator ­Waters said of Mr Hutton: “Social justice doesn’t stop because of one man’s focus on how other people identify. The rest of us are getting on with the job.”

Mr Hutton said upwards of 30 former Greens members had reached out to him about being expelled for challenging the party’s position on gender. Most were women. Many more quit after being subjected to harassment for voicing reservations about trans people accessing ­normally segregated spaces such as public and school toilets, changing rooms or in sports where transitioning boys competed against girls.

Anna Kerr’s experience in Sydney was one of the cases that prompted Mr Hutton to take to Facebook in 2022 to urge the party to review its gender policies, triggering the internal complaints that led to his expulsion last month. This was upheld by the Greens’ state council on Sunday.

Ms Kerr, a human rights lawyer, was suspended and expelled from the party for, among other alleged wrongdoings, holding the view that men cannot be women. Her public criticism of protests against the exclusion of transgender women from the women-only McIver’s Ladies Baths in Sydney was deemed to be transphobic by her critics in the party.

Senator Waters and former Greens leader Adam Bandt. Picture: Liam Kidston

Her legal service, the Feminist Legal Clinic, was defunded by the Sydney City Council. “I think it’s great that Drew is speaking out,” she said on Monday. “We need more people to do that. But the fact is many people just choose to leave the Greens rather than be subject to the sort of abuse and harassment that happens if you cross certain interests … in the party.”

Helen Lewers was expelled in 2023 after being ensnared in the row over the “Let Women Speak” rally in Melbourne, an anti-trans demonstration that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis. Like state Liberal MP Moira Deeming, Ms Lewers was hit by blowback from her own party for attending.

Mr Bandt labelled anyone who was there as “Nazi-adjacent” on social media, something Ms Lewers found devastating.

“There was such a good feeling amongst the women at that rally. We were not Nazis,” she said.

“We were mainly left-wing women … it was just shocking.

“For teenage girls, it was like the fashion to become trans … but it has such devastating consequences for those who choose to go along the medical pathway … and have surgical interventions. It’s just so terrible.

“So we wanted to talk about those things (but) there was no place we could talk about it elsewhere because the trans-activists had such a close eye on what women were doing.”

In Dr Hamilton’s case in Townsville, she said she was never given the opportunity to confront her accusers in the party; the complainant or complainants were not identified.

Backing Mr Hutton, the environmental engineer said: “I think the trans ideology is a cult and a lot of people have been captured. They’re unable to have a reasonable conversation about trans ­issues. You’re simply not allowed to say, ‘well, hang on, there are risks and there are concerns’ about transitioning. No one is allowed to offer an alternative opinion that’s not completely in line with what the trans ideologues want us to believe.”

Cheryl Hercus, 70, who ­proudly identifies as a lesbian woman, said she was forced out of the Victorian Greens after posting links to articles that were critical of gender identity theory on social media.

She resigned her membership rather than contest the complaints made against her.

“We were basically painted as being fundamentally racist if we believed that biological reality was reality,” she said.

“It just became obvious to me that the whole of the party had been captured by this ideology and to try and fight it from within was just huge.”

Mr Hutton emphasised that he had not been breached for denigrating transgender people, but over comments made by others on his Facebook page. He had refused demands by the party to delete them because he believed in free speech.

Asked for his view on trans people, he said: “I think they deserve all the rights every other adult Australian should have, no more and no less.

“And if they want further rights, then they have to be prepared to argue for that and debate it. For males who have transitioned to female and want access to women’s changing rooms and to participate in women’s sport, or for transwomen who want to go to women’s prisons, then they have to make a case for those things to happen and be prepared to engage in respectful debate.

“That’s my position. I believe there are two genders, two biological sexes, and unlike many good people I know in the Greens, who agree with me, I am prepared to say it.”