Better the Deves you know?

A fight has broken out in a Sydney electorate - and the wider world - over sport and who gets to play

A fight has broken out in a Sydney electorate - and the wider world - over sport and who gets to play

Politics has always been a contest of ideas. But the election campaign in a small electorate in Sydney's plush North Shore has turned into a blood sport...about sport.

More precisely, who has the right to play sport against whom.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Tuesday came out swinging in fierce support of the Liberal party's candidate for the seat of Warringah and in doing so, drew a clear line in the sand about where his party stands on trans athletes playing women's sport.

Katherine Deves is contesting the election for Team Blue in the seat of Warringah. A lawyer, mother and, before she was pre-selected as a political candidate, she established an advocacy group called Save Women's Sport Australasia which campaigns against allowing trans athletes to play women's sport.

It's an issue which has drawn global attention owing to high-profile cases in the US, has divided communities in Great Britain and has now found a lightning rod in north Sydney. 

Deves has made many thousands of comments about trans people and their participation in sport and during the first week of the election campaign apologised for some of some of them - namely, labelling Wear it Purple Day as a "grooming tactic" which promoted "extreme body modification", describing trans children as "surgically mutilated and sterilised" and comparing her activism on the subject of transgender women's participation in sport to standing up against the Holocaust. 

In an apology, Deves said, “In my dedication to fighting for the rights of women and girls, my language has on occasion been unacceptable.

“It has hurt people, and detracted from my arguments. I apologise for such language and the hurt that I have caused. I commit to continuing the fight for the safety of girls and women in a respectful way.”

A NSW Liberal MP joined in calls to have Deves disqualified but the team captain and many high-profile senior Liberals are standing by her. 

"She is a woman, standing up for women, and girls and their access to fair sport in this country. I’m not going to allow her to be silenced, I’m not going to allow her to be pushed aside as the pile on comes in to try and silence her. I will stand up with her, my team is standing up with her, and we will make sure that she won’t be silenced," Morrison said.

"I chose the woman who put herself through the solicitor's administration board and stood up [for] women and girls in sport, and who was raising three of her own girls in that electorate right now, living in Manly.

"I think she will make a great member of parliament ... if she is elected as the member for Warringah, and I don’t think she should be silenced because she has views that others don’t agree with."

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg, a moderate conservative not known to harbour hard right-wing views, said Deves' comments were "insensitive" and "unacceptable" - “they were inappropriate and they were unacceptable... There’s no mistaking that I feel very strongly about that. She has apologised and that was the right thing to do," Mr Frydenberg said.

But he also indicated that people in the community felt the same about the issue at the heart of the matter. 

Frydenberg said Deves had raised issues around safety of girls, fairness in sport, and legitimate competition, which were “legitimate issues”.

“I understand them. I think many parents can understand them. Let’s debate those issues without the use of such wrong analogies and language."

There's now a very clear difference between attitudes on this issue - those concerned by trans athletes competing in women's sport, and those who simply... aren't. 

Deves is running against independent MP Zali Steggall, who won the former blue ribbon seat from the Liberals which ended former Prime Minister Tony Abbott's political career at the 2019 election. 

Steggall, also a lawyer and former Olympian, who primarily campaigns on climate change, told Sky News the issue of transgender athletes was simply “about creating division” and talking about the concerns of parents was transphobic.

"This is about creating division, I think this is a bit of a dead cat strategy, you put something very controversial on the table and that distracts from other issues.

"Saying that parents will be concerned is just repeating a transphobia line," Steggall said.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has also said it's a non-issue and added that he wouldn't have chosen Deves as a candidate. “This is just another example of the chaos and division that is there within the Liberal Party,” Albanese said.

(Labor is actually not running a candidate in the electorate which Steggall, a strong climate change campaigner, is tipped to hold on to).

Battle lines have been drawn and the voters, as ever, will choose their champion.