Opposition Indigenous Affairs spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says ‘women are under attack’

Opposition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says pushing back against the transgender movement and its impact on children will be among her next priorities.

Opposition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Opposition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price says pushing back against the transgender movement and its impact on children will be among her next priorities after the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum.

Speaking at an event hosted by Liberal senator Alex Antic that featured speakers including Katherine Deves and Moira Deeming, Senator Price said the parliamentary inquiry into gender-affirming care – which refers to medical treatments used to transition people to the gender of their choosing – proposed by One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson should not have been left to “a conscience vote”.

“In the Senate, we had an opportunity to vote for an inquiry into gender-affirming treatments for children. It should never have been a conscience vote because this issue speaks to the human rights of our most vulnerable, and that is our children,” Senator Price told the small group gathered in Parliament House.

“This debate, this argument, the way it’s being played out, the way in which women are now under attack for standing up for the vulnerable, for standing up for children, is so many steps backward to where we’ve come to fight for our rights as women.”

The topic of transgender rights has become a political flashpoint over the past two years, with Ms Deeming suspended from the Victorian Liberal party room following her appearance at a Let Women Speak rally in March.

At the 2022 federal election, Scott Morrison sought to bring the transgender issue into focus by selecting Ms Deves as the Liberal candidate for Warringah.

Senator Price said women such as Ms Deves and Ms Deeming were “brave” and had been “thrown under the bus” in expressing concerns for women’s rights being impinged upon by transgender women.

“That sends a message to our vulnerable women, women who don't come from Western cultures, that they aren’t important, that their voices don’t matter,” she said.

“If you can have a movement that has seen to provide equal rights and opportunity and respect for women in Western culture … suddenly be overturned and go backward, well, that leaves our most vulnerable in a more marginalised position.

“That puts us further behind the eight-ball.”

Asked if she would take up the issue following her campaign against the voice to parliament, Senator Price said it went “hand in hand” with her portfolio, particularly regarding issues facing marginalised Indigenous women.

“It’s definitely up there in the list of priorities,” she said.

Senator Antic’s event was heavily policed, and organisers claimed they had received credible death threats.

Disallowed entry, the National Union of Students, LGBTQI+ advocates and Greens MPs protested outside Parliament House.

Greens LGBTQI+ spokesman Stephen Bates said the speakers were “fearmongers” and peddled transphobia.

“There is no line these people won’t cross,” he said. “They’re hellbent on taking us back decades on LGBTIQA+ and women’s rights.”

Ms Deves told the event on Tuesday morning the resolve of women who were critical of transgender rights had been “strengthened” and “galvanised” by the backlash they had faced from some sections of society.

“The apparatuses of the state, the courts, disciplinary processes, and quasi-judicial bodies may be weaponised against those of us who refuse to acquiesce to a movement that is determined to erase us as a legal sex class,” she said.

Psychiatrist Jillian Spencer, who has launched a complaint with the Queensland Human Rights Commission over her inability to object on medical grounds to gender-affirming treatments, said there needed to be a federal independent body set up to determine “what interventions are safe to be delivered to children, at what age and under what circumstances”. She said children who were “vulnerable and confused” were presenting at gender clinics and being pushed into gender transitioning as a “way forward to happiness”.

Dr Spencer, who appeared on Seven’s controversial Spotlight episode, said public health services were “still requiring all their staff to affirm children and to recommend these risky interventions”.