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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 3 Hansard (13 March) . . Page.. 1070 ..

MS DUNDAS

I now quote from an email that came after that email, which I am pretty sure the Leader of the Opposition has seen. It says, "The ACT government has been very mindful of the needs and issues of people with intersex conditions, and, although the AIS SGA had concerns with the legislation, all our issues have been resolved and we are pleased to be able to endorse the bill."

I wanted to put on the record that the AIS support group did have their concerns heard-that both I and the government worked to make sure that this piece of legislation did reflect the reality for people in our community and that we did have a separate definition for intersex people.

The rest of the amendments deal with the ability of transgender and intersex people to elect the gender of a searching officer when required to undergo a full body search. The need for these provisions is important, to ensure we are legislating for the respect and dignity to which transgender and intersex people should be entitled. Depending on the individual transgender or intersex person's circumstances, they may feel more comfortable with either a male or female officer conducting the search, as the case may be.

The government had originally drafted a procedure whereby a transgender person must be searched by a member of the sex with which they identified. Of course, as many transgender people do not identify as either male or female, there may be cases where it is inappropriate-for example, an intersex person who may have irregular genitalia, or a female to male transgender person who may not have undergone reassignment surgery. We are now allowing members of our community to make the election to which they will feel most comfortable, as they go through what is always an invasive procedure-being searched and investigated by police.

I would like to put on the record my thanks to the good process group and the broader ACT queer community for their involvement in the development of this piece of legislation and the amendments. I hope these amendments are successful and that, today, we will be able to complete an incredibly important step in removing discrimination from our laws. The process we have undergone is a very important one, and I welcome the government's ability to move on this issue.

It was important that we got this piece of legislation right. There were a number of issues raised on it, in its original form, but we were able to work to bring about the amendments. I hope the Assembly supports those, so that this legislation is more realistic and more workable-so we undertake this first step towards removing the discrimination that has existed in our laws. It is only the first step. We await the results of the government's consultations for the next stage of removing the discrimination which exists in our legislation.

I hope that process is one that is informed and one which this Assembly approaches with an open mind-so we will not get bogged down in petty procedural debates, but have more focus on the work which needs to be done to remove discrimination from our laws and from our society.

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