Rights and protections for LGBTQ+ people in New South Wales have been strengthened with the passing of a bill in the state parliament late on Thursday, after the legislation was watered down to gain Labor support.
The equality bill will give transgender people the ability to have their sex changed on their birth certificates without undergoing invasive surgery, bringing the state in line with others, and non-binary will become a gender option for birth certificates.
There were cheers in the chamber when the bill passed about 8.40pm. The independent MP Alex Greenwich, who introduced the package a year ago, embraced the leader of the government in the upper house, Penny Sharpe after the vote that succeeded without the opposition’s support.
Greenwich said the changes would “improve LGBTIQA+ dignity, safety and equality” and thanked Sharpe for her work getting the legislation through the upper house.
“We’ve got more work to do and we start that work now with new confidence from these significant wins for our community,” he said on Thursday night.
After months of stagnation, Greenwich convinced the premier, Chris Minns, to support the bill by making a number of major concessions, including dropping changes to the anti-discrimination act.
While advocates welcomed the remaining elements of the bill, many also raised concerns that protections for LGBTQ+ teachers and students at private schools had been dumped.
The Equality Australia chief executive, Anna Brown, thanked community members who shared their stories and all those who campaigned to garner support for the changes.
“These new laws will have no impact on the lives of most people in our state, but for a small number of people it will make their lives immeasurably better,” she said after the bill passed.
“It’s a journey that continues as we turn our attention to the state’s anti-discrimination laws and our ongoing efforts to protect vulnerable teachers and students in religious and private schools across the state.”
Greenwich had hoped the Coalition would allow MPs a conscience vote on the bill but earlier in the week the opposition leader, Mark Speakman, confirmed his party would stand against the reforms.
Despite that, the Liberal MP for the North Shore, Felicity Wilson, crossed the floor.
“Just because your party doesn’t have a conscience vote doesn’t mean you don’t have a conscience,” she told ABC Radio Sydney earlier in the week.
Greenwich said on Wednesday that the Coalition was moving further to the right and “using my community as a political football, as a political punching bag”.
“I am concerned that we are seeing a rightwing trend developing within the Coalition,” he said. “No other leader has denied their members a conscience vote on LBGT issues.”
The opposition attorney general, Alister Henskens, held a news conference with religious figures and community members opposed to the reforms earlier in the week.
Among the concerns he raised was about the “impact upon the privacy of women’s spaces”.
“It’s moving too far and it’s moving too quickly,” he said.
But the attorney general, Michael Daley, said the opposition was misrepresenting the package.
The bill also repealed offences for living off the earnings of a sex worker and made threatening to “out” a person’s LGBTIQA+ status an offence.
