In this episode of Family Matters, Simon welcomes back Ro Edge from Save Women’s Sports Australasia to discuss the New Zealand Law Commission’s recent recommendations to add gender identity as a protected ground in the Human Rights Act.
The conversation delves into the implications of this change, which Ro argues will undermine sex-based rights for women in spaces such as changing rooms, sports, and schools. Ro highlights that this could lead to the erasure of clear biological distinctions, presenting a challenge to women’s rights and safety. Simon and Ro discuss how this new proposal conflicts with sex-based rights, and unlike our existing religious freedoms, what the Law Commission proposes comes with compelled speech and coercion because everyone will have to believe what gender activists believe.
The episode also addresses concerns about these recommendations introducing hate speech laws by default, effectively stifling democratic debate and compelling belief in gender ideology. Their discussion includes examples from the United Kingdom and Australia to illustrate potential real-life impacts, and it urges viewers to contact their local MPs to oppose these changes.
Show script auto-generated by Descript app:
FM – Ro Edge
Simon O’Connor: Hi everyone. Welcome back to Family Matters. I’m returning to New Zealand, in fact, a wonderful guest we’ve had on before. Ro Edge from Save Women’s Sports Australasia. Ro, welcome back to the show.
Ro Edge: Good morning. Lovely to speak here.
Simon O’Connor: It is great to have you here, but as well, you and I know what we’re going to talk about. It’s a pretty major issue, a big one, contemporary and coming out of the I was going to say the Human Rights Commission, although they’re donkey deep on this stuff too, coming out of the Law Commission who have just published what they’re calling Ia Tangata: Protections in the Human Rights Act 1993 for people who are transgender, people who are non-binary and people with innate variations of sex characteristics.
Just saying that Ro, in itself, is a mouthful and a lot of people are probably glossing over. Do you want to give us though, the 101 of what this is all about before we delve into some of the specifics?
Ro Edge: Yeah. So what happened is, and I think in 2022 then Justice Minister Kiri Allean directed the Law Commission to look at our Human Rights Act and to include gender identity as a protected ground. Yeah, protected ground. So to like basically add it in as a on par with like sex and age and disability, et cetera, when it’s just it’s a belief system. It’s not based on biological reality at all, but the law Commission have released these recommendations in this 500 page report, which was an incredibly hard read.
And I have to admit, I skimmed over most of it because it was such a challenge. But what it essentially does is by protecting gender identity as a prohibited ground, it overrides all sex-based rights. So women’s sex-based rights to single sex spaces and changing rooms, toilets, sports, women’s refuges, anywhere, even single sex schools become an issue, not just for girls, but for boys as well.
But the worst thing about it is it’s almost a bit of lawfare, like it’s the deliberate use of law to close off democratic debate. Because if you disagree with this once, if this is made law and this is what we need to fight against, hen basically it’s hate speech law by stealth and we’ll end up having happening – what happened to Graham Linehan in the UK. For those that aren’t familiar, he was arrested flying into the UK for I think, three tweets that were pretty innocuous, really about the whole trans thing, but arrested by five armed policemen and he’s going to have to go to court for it. It’s just absolutely nuts.
Simon O’Connor: Oh, I couldn’t believe it when I started reading. As you say, Graham was only here a few months back. For those who are going I think I know the name, obviously, he speaks into he wants to protect children and women from this ideology, but he’s the co-creator of comedy shows like Father Ted, Blacklist, and the IT crowd. He’s absolutely funny. But he’s Irish too, and I can say it as someone who’s got an Irish passport, he’s fiery and he speaks boldly, but you’re right, five armed police. Meanwhile, of course, without going on this tangent Ro, other forms of crime are just absolutely rampant in the UK. And if you’re on X, as I know you are, the abuse that if you will, one side gives out and just completely ignored. But the Graham Linehan’s, the JK Rowling’s, the Kirralie Smith’s in Australia, Sall Grover’s and others – it’s just appalling. I suspect you get it in the neck as well as someone who speaks into this space?
Ro Edge: Actually not so much in the last few years. It’s really interesting, I maybe I just ignore it as well. I don’t look on social media and try and actively find it, but not so much. I think especially in the sports area, people know it’s wrong and even a lot of people in the transgender community know it’s wrong.
Not that they’ll speak up and say that most of the time, because they’ll just get shouted down by all the activists that exist within it. But the really scary thing about these recommendations is if they come into law, like trans activists. Very lit… Gosh, what’s, how do I say that word?
Simon O’Connor: Litigious.
Ro Edge: Oh, that’s it. Thank you. There we go. Litigious! And so they will actively go after anyone, as we see overseas, that doesn’t actually conform to this compelled speech that we’re going to have to adopt through these recommendations.
Simon O’Connor: It’s a bullying. I’ve tried to argue, probably inarticulately, that a lot of the trans agenda or the gender ideology is a bullying and primarily of biological men bullying their way into women’s spaces and certainly women’s sport.
And that was certainly one of the many red flags for me. Out of this report, 427 pages, I almost lost the will to live. We might come to why it’s so verbose, but they were pushing very hard that there’ll be case by case situations. So they’re saying basically, now for women’s sports or single sex spaces, you’ve got to let these people in. But you can have case by case exceptions, but I think you are right. They’ll just be litigious to every group.
Ro Edge: What they’ve essentially done is they’ve flipped the protections on the head. Women’s sex-based rights used to be protected. That was just known, where what they’re saying now is that the burden of proof falls on women in order to say that men cannot be in their spaces. For it has to be reasonably required that there’s a reason why they can’t be in their spaces.
So women have to continually prove why men shouldn’t be in there. A bit like we saw when the IOC changed their rules the last time for people who identified as, had a gender identity that woman had to prove that these men were, it wasn’t unfair and unsafe for them to be in our category. It’s just everything is inverted now, isn’t it?
It’s just, it’s completely nuts.
Simon O’Connor: I still struggle to understand how we’ve got here and I think we’ve probably touched on it before, because if you do surveys, and I know, delve into the sports space because you’re an expert in that, the overwhelming number, it’s 90 plus percent of people are saying, of course biological men should not be in women’s sport, and yet it’s becoming, it’s not quite ubiquitous, but it’s everywhere at the moment, and most people seem to go silent or just let it happen.
Ro Edge: I had listened to a really interesting presentation last weekend as at the New Zealand First convention, and Penny Marie from Let Kids Be Kids, did a really interesting presentation on exactly how we’ve got here, where these nutty, this gender ideology has come from and how it’s infiltrated the UN and from the UN now, how it’s having an impact on laws throughout Western countries.
So it is very scary. The impact, we’ve seen it through the Birth Deaths And Marriages Act with the sex self ID, through the Conversion Therapy legislation. It’s just a continual attack on sex-based rights and on families too, because this just does impact on families.
Parents won’t be able to speak out on behalf of their children, it’s already bad enough. What’s happening with, the indoctrination of gender ideologies in our schools. It’s, yeah. It’s not a direction.
Simon O’Connor: Keeping to the schools or the sports space, the parent who does choose to speak up if this became law.
In fact I should probably quickly put that in, that the Law Commission writes these reports, all 427 pages. You can sense I’m still bitter about having to read the whole thing. But it will require the government of the day to actually pass the laws. Although these reports create a lot of pressure. But if this was accepted, gender identity became a reason for discrimination, a parent who wants to speak up because their daughter’s playing against a biological man in their netball team or soccer team – the parents are going to be coming up against that lawfare that you’re talking about.
The other one’s going to be hauled before some sort of quasi-judicial body that’ll abuse the hell out of them. Excuse the French.
Ro Edge: Yeah, it’s already bad enough. I constantly get parents of young girls contacting me whose daughters have been impacted, one just about three or four weeks ago.
And it’s happened two years in a row now a boy is self-identified into the cross country. It was like when they were 11 and now when they’re 12. And the girls have lost out being able to go to, onto the regional cross-country competitions because the boy has taken their spot. And when the girls tried to raise concerns with the school, they would just shut down and tell them, don’t worry, his testosterone hasn’t fully developed now. Just let the boy take your space and sit there and smile and clap for him, like good little girls. It just, it’s so infuriating. But the parents are too scared to speak out, they start acting courageous and then I just never hear from them.
And this is, it will only get worse when they think that they could actually be criminalised for it. It’s, yeah, we’re compelling speech. We’re forcing people to adhere to a belief system that most people don’t believe in. And the Law Society, sorry, the Law Commission, if they wanted to put some protections in for gender identity, they could have done it in the same way as they do for religions.
So that people would respect the fact that other people might believe that they were born in the wrong body and they identified as whatever. But it doesn’t mean that we should all be compelled to believe it.
Simon O’Connor: I’m pleased you raised that. That’s been exercising my mind. For a number of reasons.
Actually. I’m off to a symposium soon to talk about religious rights and freedoms and I was thinking how is this push for gender identity to be included as a form of discrimination – how is it different from religious freedom? Because people believe all sorts of things. Obviously from the Christian faith to the Islamic faith, to the spaghetti monster in the sky if you’re as a Pastafarian.
And so how is that different from someone who believes that they’re in the wrong body and the Law Commission early on, Ro, speaks well, ‘Look, it’s not just a belief’ They argue it’s just so deeply held and you go, yep, that’s like religion.
Ro Edge: So are religions. Yes, exactly.
Simon O’Connor: But religious freedom in New Zealand doesn’t allow said religion, whatever it is to compel, as you say, to force its view. You can’t barrel into a school and say we’re all going to be praying this way, or we all have to set a little temple up in the corner. That’s not how it operates. But this is very different. This is that forced, compelled speech.
Ro Edge: But even worse than that, it, yeah, it’s forced and compelled, but if you don’t adhere to it, there are penalties for not adhering to this new religion that’s the really bad part and that’s where the law comes in.
Simon O’Connor: I found reading through it, it was just, and I don’t what your impressions were that I can guess I keep talking about 427 pages and part of it is tongue in cheek, but the other is when you are dealing with absurd concepts, which I think the Law Commission is, they’ve just got to create a whole lot of verbal garbage and reading.
Paragraph after paragraph was really just incoherent, irrational. Rubbish.
Ro Edge: Wasn’t it? ‘Most people giving birth a woman, but not all’. Wow. Thank you for that. Groundbreaking Revelation. Jeepers. And then there’s that law firm in Wellington who is apparently highly respected law firm and they basically said that you can’t say that there’s any male advantage.
I’ll read it out, actually. Let me find it.
Simon O’Connor: Please do. Bob and I just laughed darkly when we read it multiple times, but no, read it out.
Ro Edge: This is Meredith Connell’s Rainbow Alliance. “It may be that any advantage that some transgender women may have in comparison to cisgender women is simply a fact of life and part of the natural variance of the human race, rather than being unfair.”
Okay, so why do we have men and women’s categories in the first place? Like seriously, the garbage that came ou.? What’s really frustrating is that there were comments that have been made by women’s groups like ours at Save Women’s Sport and Speak Up for Women, but they were just completely ignored. Like they were in there as like tokenism.
Okay, see, look we listened and we’ve put what they’ve said, and then they just completely ignored it and focused on the absolute rubbish that this ideology forces on us.
Simon O’Connor: But you’re not surprised, are you? This is a leading question, but when they put out their terms of reference, the Commission that is, and we sat down and chatted with them, it was clear they were already ideologically compromised.
So you’re not really surprised where this has landed today?
Ro Edge: No, because it’s the same thing we saw with Sport New Zealand when they started out creating their transgender guidelines. We knew what the outcome was before the process had even started. It was just a fast.
Simon O’Connor: I think a big part of it too is, and I’m glad you mentioned obviously your own contributions, Family First contributed, a whole number. You can see the list at the end. They were preferencing certain groups and more often than not, and again this is the irrationality, they would say, oh, Family First said this, or Save Women’s Sports said that, or Speak Up for Women, but we don’t agree and so that’s okay.
You don’t have to. But there was never really an explanation. And yet at the same time, Ro, they spent pages and pages dismantling, I would argue, relatively simple concepts like sex. We understand what biological sex is, but the Commission spent pages dismissing it that somehow humans don’t really understand what this means.
Ro Edge: Yeah. So now what they’re wanting to do, and instead of protecting sex, like something we all understand a biological reality. They want to protect invented identities and like they can be expanded. Is this like the gender umbrella expands and, there, there’s so many different ways you can identify now, but they’ve basically said that people can stretch the definition to whatever they want and we all have to believe what they tell us they say they are.
Simon O’Connor: That’s why I think the phrase I would use, and it’s picking up what a lot of advocates say in this space, but it’s a erasing women or the category of women, it erases men as well, but we know in this gender identity space that the majority are biological men trying to force their way into women’s spaces.
But you cannot have. The right or right. You can’t have sex and gender operating happily in parallel. One trumps the other I would argue, and I’m thinking of the Sall Grover case in Australia at the moment of how that’s operating.
Ro Edge: Yeah. The Law Commission tried to say that they’d balanced sex and gender, but they haven’t at all.
They’ve just made sex secondary to gender. And this is the problem is that you can’t balance it like when you take, when you give additional human rights, because that’s what these are, these additional human rights to a sector of society, you are taking away the human rights of others.
So by giving the right of men to be able to invade women’s spaces and women’s sports, you are taking away the rights of women to say, no, these are our spaces and our sports, and we don’t want you here. So they have advantaged one group over another. And the sad part is that, these women’s sex-based rights were fought for over generations and they’re just being completely dismantled.
And this is what this government has to be incredibly careful of, is that, if National and ACT, and I know New Zealand First won’t support this, but if they do support this, they are going to be responsible for completely deconstructing all of the sex based rights women fought so hard for, and I hope like how they don’t, but we, I do wonder about the timing of ‘Bussy’ Benjamin Doyle, about his resignation and the fact he’s resigned, but he’s going to be there for another month, and whether he will use his bullying of him because of his gender identity, to force the government to accept these recommendations.
I have a real concern that there’s going to be a lot of pressure applied by him, the Greens, the media, because they work on behalf of the Greens so much, to actually push the government to do this. And so that’s where it’s really important for everyone to contact their local MPs, especially their National, ACT MPs and actually get them to reject these recommendations.
Simon O’Connor: Oh, I a hundred percent concur. We’ve seen already this current government, ACT was the one who I think it was around the passports they changed or was it the birth certificates that, was an ACT minister that changed that.
Ro Edge: Yes, birth certificates. Parents who changed their sex could change their sex on their children’s birth certificates. I don’t understand, ACT, like when we do any of our polling, they are by far the most opposed. Their supporters are by far the most opposed, but ACT is totally disconnected. The ACT leadership are totally disconnected with their membership on this.
Simon O’Connor: I think a lot of the National guys as well. There’s a range of views in the National Party, and I’m not pretending to know the mind of every MP, but I know those, and I won’t name them here, but there’ll be those who would vote for this change in a heartbeat, and there’ll be those who will oppose it.
I think the key you’ve suggested, the key thing is people need to get in touch with their MPs. Now we just say we don’t want a bar of this beause the pressure will build, they say the Greens, this will be their big platform. The media will, it’s what I call the moral imperative. They’ll say, look, the Law Commission has said this, why would you minister Goldsmith not pursue this? And whether he, Luxon, and others have the strength to go, no, we’re just not dealing with it. That remains to be seen.
Ro Edge: Yeah. And if anyone wants help in terms of understanding this, like Family First have done some really good stuff on this; Ani O’Brien and her blog has, Speak Up for Women have as well. So visit their websites and get some information, get armed with it, and definitely reach out. We need to fight against this.
Simon O’Connor: Yeah. And I think it’s just really important for viewers to understand that if this discriminatory framework based on gender is put beside sex discrimination, the latter goes out the window. And again, I referenced the Sall Grover case where her having a female-only, biological female only, space has been trumped by a man who says no, you’re discriminating based on my gender. And we’re already seeing that trajectory. You’ll see it in the sports space.
Just before we finish up. Have you had some wins in the sports space? I recall reading a few weeks back that the guidelines were pulled from Sports New Zealand with Raelene Castle most displeased. But it doesn’t feel like the substantial victory that we would like.
Ro Edge: No, it’s a step in the right direction, but like it feels like we take one step forward and five steps backwards with this ideology.
So yeah, it’s wins, but we have to keep fighting. I think the most scary thing about the Law Commission’s recommendations is they also introduce hate speech laws by default because if you speak up like if these recommendations are accepted, if you speak up and say that you don’t want men in your spaces and your sports or whatever, then you will face criminal proceedings.
It’s, obviously if you just do it once off, maybe not, but if you are a bit like me and you are determined to fight for those, I could quite easily end up in court like Sall, like Kirralie Smith did as well. It’s, yeah, it’s just a nutty ideology that really is trying to destroy girls and women’s rights and families as far as I can see.
Simon O’Connor: Again, it’s replacing observable reality with belief and we touched on that religious analogy earlier. None of us would think that society should conform to the religious beliefs of any particular group. We would, we’d go nuts If the Law Commission came out today and said, oh, look, we want embolden religious freedom to basically make sure that everyone conforms with what the believer wants. We’d go ‘no, go away’. We got rid of blasphemy laws while I was in parliament. Rightly and yet here we just seem to have lost our marbles. Is there anything that’s positive at the moment, particularly in the sports space, as said, both here and overseas?
Ro Edge: There are. There are positive things happening, especially in the UK.
We’ve seen England Hockey and Wales Hockey basically come out with good rules. Lately, more and more sports are adopting sex-based rules for very valid biological reasons. Despite what McConnell, whatever their law firm has called up in Wellington, thinks so. They know that the public do not support it – that they get, they are opposed. And, we have to be thankful for Donald Trump. I don’t care what you think of him, he has been an absolute legend for really supporting women’s sex space rights.
Simon O’Connor: He is just pushed back hard. I think, in my own view, for what it’s worth, this is not a tinker around the edge campaign. It has to be a very well values led, but very principally done, and just firm. Very firm. And it is relatively black and white. Even though the Commission, the Law Commission was trying to argue again, pages by pages, that there isn’t a binary concept of biological reality.
Ro Edge: I think probably one of the most frustrating things is the Law Commission saying that this was just a little tweak and there was nothing really major, and it was just a clarification of the Human Rights Act where really it fundamentally changes everything.
Simon O’Connor: Yeah. Again, it’s mutually exclusive to sex-based rights. It’s as simple as that. Last question, because I’m surprised and it’s a reflective question, I’m surprised at this point how little media attention has been given to the report. I would’ve expected this to be plastered across the front pages of stuff and the Herald and all the rest of them.
Are you surprised that the relative quiet or they think they’ve already won?
Ro Edge: I think they’ve already won, and I think they’ll use the Benjamin Doyle to do that plastering over the next few weeks. I could be wrong. Let’s wait and see. I do think that they mainly think they’ve won this battle and that all of us that don’t agree are just transphobes and whatever other phobia that they can come up with, but they are not the majority.
We are the majority. All of our polling shows us that we are the majority, and so people need to have the courage, find the courage to speak up before we actually lose all these rights.
Simon O’Connor: And as you were encouraging to know that there are groups from Family First to Speak Up for Women, Save Women’s Sports, the likes of Ani who are doing some great work if people need to understand the arguments.
And on that, what’s the best way for people to find your website and the work that you are doing?
Ro Edge: www.savewomenssport.com. Otherwise we are on X as well – Save Women’s Sports Australasia, and on Facebook.
Simon O’Connor: Ro it is always a pleasure to have you here and to bring these big topics down to earth, but also just the importance of women, particularly in the sports space.
But actually just again, if you will, translate that god awful long document in a way that people understand. So look, thanks for being part of the show.
Ro Edge: My pleasure. Can I just say one other thing is that the biggest problem that we have at the moment is our young woman. They have been really indoctrinated by this stuff.
So parents, please talk to your daughters, help them understand what is really happening there. They will fight back probably at you and argue at you against this. But really get them to read Ani O’Brien’s blog, get them to understand what the issues are here, because so many young women are giving away the hard fought sex-based rights.
They are not understanding the implications, and we really need to get that message through to them.
Simon O’Connor: Oh we do. And I’m pleased you talk about that hard fought road. Really it’s taken quite a while to push men out of women’s spaces and, the rights and freedoms that up till now you’re enjoying.
But again, to use that word I had touched on earlier, the bullies are pushing their way back in. And it’s been celebrated by the likes of the Law Commission and other, it’s nuts. But you’re right, I don’t fully fathom it other than the educational side of why so many young women are, what do they call them – allies? Allies of this agenda.
Ro Edge: It’s education and social media. They’re being indoctrinated to give away their rights and they don’t understand. And because I guess they’ve always enjoyed them, they don’t understand the implications of not having them and it’s not until they lose them that they wake up.
And I’ve seen that happen with a number of young women that they think it’s all okay, but then when it impacts them, all of a sudden they realise it’s not. We need to make them all understand it’s not okay and fight to retain them.
Simon O’Connor: I think that’s a great place to end. And Ro, thanks so much for your work and advocacy and being part of the show today.
Ro Edge: Thank you for having me.
