The Liberal party’s candidate in Warringah, Katherine Deves, compared her anti-trans activism to standing up against the Holocaust during a YouTube panel.
She also expressed support for One Nation New South Wales state MP Mark Latham’s bill to ban teachers discussing gender identity in schools in the same video.
Appearing alongside British television writer and anti-trans activist Graham Linehan last year, Deves appeared to compare her campaign to prevent transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports to Germans speaking out against the transportation of Jewish people to death camps in the second world war.
“I’ve always loved 20th-century history and I think many people would say to themselves, ‘Oh, I’d never be the villagers that stayed quiet while the trains went past, or whatever, I would have been part of the French resistance, the underground, you know, I would have been one of those people’,” she said in the video.
“And when all of this was happening and no one was sort of speaking out I thought, ‘God, this is … the moment in my life where I am going to have to stand up and say something against the status quo and against the establishment and say I don’t think this is right.’ And it might come at a cost to me but I have to say it.”
The comments were criticised by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies chief executive, Darren Bark, and the Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive, Peter Wertheim.
“There is nothing in contemporary Australian life and politics that is remotely comparable to the wholesale destruction of human life and civilisation that occurred during world war two,” they said in a joint statement.
“This sort of hyperbole trivialises the depths of inhumanity that were plumbed during that terrible conflict, and desensitises people to evil, instead of educating them to recognise and counteract it.
“There should always be extra caution taken when making historical analogies, especially by those who aspire to hold public office or leadership positions in our community.”
On Thursday afternoon, Deves apologised for the comments and said her language had been “unacceptable”.
“In my dedication to fighting for the rights of women and girls, my language has on occasion been unacceptable,” she said in a statement, in her second apology of the campaign.
“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 to fight for the safety of girls and women in a respectful way.”
Deves, a “captain’s pick” by the prime minister, Scott Morrison, to run against the independent MP, Zali Steggall, in Tony Abbott’s former seat of Warringah, has come under fire in recent days over a series of since-deleted posts made on social media.
On Wednesday the Guardian revealed Deves described Wear it Purple Day – which is billed as an event celebrating diversity – as a “grooming tactic” promoting “extreme body modification” on her now-deleted website. She also repeatedly misgendered a New Zealand trans athlete, Laurel Hubbard, and suggested a young boy could ask to “remove his penis” after attending a respectful relationships workshop at school.
It came after News.com.au reported Deves had also deleted social media accounts on which she described trans children as “surgically mutilated and sterilised” and said she was “triggered” by the LGBTQ+ rainbow flag.
Deves also apologised for some of those posts, saying that her comments were “not acceptable”.
“My advocacy for the rights and safety of women and girls is well known, and I stand by my desire to ensure we protect the safety of women and girls and our entire community,” she said in a statement.
“However, the language I used was not acceptable, and for that I apologise.”
But the comments made in the video – which was recorded in February last year – are likely to increase the pressure on Morrison to disendorse Deves, who was nominated to run in the seat after the federal takeover of the NSW party despite having little factional support.
While the party always considered it highly unlikely that it would win back Warringah from Steggall, the Guardian understands Liberal moderates fighting tough campaigns against independent candidates in the nearby seats of North Sydney and Wentworth have become increasingly frustrated with the slew of headlines about Deves’s position on trans rights.
On Wednesday Morrison was forced to backpedal after earlier flagging the Coalition might support a bill banning transgender women from playing women’s sport after a backlash from Liberal moderates.
Deves appeared on Linehan’s podcast along with University of Melbourne academic Holly Lawford-Smith, who has faced backlash from colleagues over her position on trans issues. After she set up a website encouraging women to report instances where they felt threatened by transgender women, colleagues penned an open letter saying the site “conflicts with the faculty commitment to diversity and inclusion”.
Linehan, the creator of British television series Father Ted, was suspended from Twitter in 2020 for “repeated violations” of the site’s rules over hateful conduct and platform manipulation. He has also been previously accused of comparing trans activism to nazism.
During the video, Deves also railed against Victoria’s ban on gay conversion practices, as the bill outlaws practices that seek to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
She said provisions in the law giving the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission the power to investigate and refer reports of conversion practices to the police amounted to the creation of a “star chamber”.
Deves also said the bill put forward by Latham – which proposed banning trans students from playing high school sports aligning with their gender and requiring parental consent before any discussion of matters concerning gender or sexuality – was the “biggest issue” in the state.
The NSW Coalition government recently said it would not support the bill because it “may lead to targeted discrimination against a marginalised community, which already experiences poorer mental health and wellbeing outcomes”.
In a submission on the bill, Deves’s group, Save Women’s Sport Australasia, argued the discussion of “gender identity” in schools was “deeply concerning”.
“This is deeply concerning due to the highly contentious nature of the topic, and it is arguing that NSW schoolchildren should be taught factually untrue and ideological concepts such as human beings can ‘change sex’, or ‘boys can be girls, or have periods’ and some ‘girls have penises’,” the submission stated.
The NSW Liberal party has been contacted for comment.
