The Liberal party’s controversial candidate for the seat of Warringah, Katherine Deves, claimed a key role in developing legislation to exclude trans women from women’s sport that has been slammed by equality advocates as “divisive and unnecessary”.
Speaking at an event organised by a group called the Coalition for Biological Reality on the issue of “gender identity in law” in Hobart in February, Deves claimed she had worked with the Tasmanian senator Claire Chandler on developing the controversial “Save Women’s Sport” bill.
“Here we are in less than 18 months [since] we started this campaign there is a bill tabled in federal parliament to clarify and preserve our rights,” she said at the event, at which Chandler also spoke.
“And we did this with nothing more than determination, grit and a bit of courage, and of course the indomitable Senator Chandler.”
Before her preselection, Deves founded the advocacy group Save Women’s Sport Australasia, which campaigns against the inclusion of trans athletes in women’s sport.
She has praised Chandler as a “marvel” and said she stood “proudly” with the Tasmanian senator in defending the “rights of little girls, young women and women everywhere”.
During the first week of the campaign she was forced to issue two separate apologises over a series of comments made before her preselection, including 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 to standing up against the Holocaust.
The revelation comes as the prime minister, Scott Morrison, resists calls to dump Deves, after Guardian Australia reported on Monday that the Liberal MP Trent Zimmerman had contacted the prime minister’s office seeking her disendorsement.
Speaking in Perth on Tuesday, Morrison said he would not join in the “pile-on” against Deves, and praised her advocacy for women in sport.
“In selecting Katherine I have selected someone … who is a woman raising three girls, who has always stood up for women and girls in sport, and I’m not going to allow a pile-on, on her, to silence her, and I think there are many Australians who agree with me about that,” Morrison said.
The New South Wales treasurer and senior moderate, Matt Kean, earlier on Tuesday called for her to be dumped, saying he did not believe “she’s fit for office”.
“I do not believe that she is aligned with the values of the Liberal party,” Kean told ABC’s Radio National on Tuesday.
“We live in a cosmopolitan, multicultural society where people are free to be themselves and that’s a fundamental tenet of liberalism.”
Deves had little factional support before the federal intervention into the NSW Liberal party in March, and sources within the state executive have described her as a “captain’s pick” by Morrison.
But that support has angered moderates in NSW, who are fighting off serious challenges in the neighbouring seats of Wentworth and North Sydney.
Zimmerman had privately called on Morrison last week to dump Deves amid concern that her anti-trans record could undermine his campaign in North Sydney against an independent challenger, Kylea Tink.
Dave Sharma, who is facing a similar contest in Wentworth from the high-profile independent Allegra Spender, is also under pressure over Deves’ remarks, but has so far refused to comment on whether she should be disendorsed.
A separate video of Deves shows that the outspoken anti-trans campaigner had also criticised Zimmerman, Sharma and fellow moderate MPs Bridget Archer, Katie Allen and Fiona Martin for crossing the floor in the religious discrimination debate over the issue of protections for transgender children.
During a speech last month to a group called Women’s Declaration, which advocates for sex-based rights, Deves accused the MPs of causing “brazen disarray” by opposing the bill.
“In 2019 it couldn’t have been plainer that the religious discrimination bill was part of the legislative omnibus for the Morrison government,” she said.
“Those who ran as endorsed candidates for the Liberal party campaigned expressly or implicitly for the RDA. That was part of the party’s campaign platform. Yet five Liberal party members crossed the floor.”
Stating she had “absolute support for a proper conscience vote”, Deves criticised the MPs for, she claimed, failing to debate the changes in the Liberal party room.
“That is where these issues are ironed out so when legislation is brought to parliament the concerns have been voiced [and are] better thought out and better planned, rather than MPs crossing the floor in the middle of the night on amendments moved by the Centre Alliance party,” she said.
Deves claimed trans children had been “confused and misled by identity politics”, were likely to be gay or lesbian, and that opposing the bill was playing “the game of wilfully pretend that they are the opposite sex”.
“The strange thing is those five members crossing the floor did so because they believed it was discriminating against trans kids,” she said.
“Traumatised girls abandoning womanhood. Kids who are gender non-conforming [and] likely to grow up to be gay or lesbian convinced they were born in the wrong sex and have the wrong body seeking refuge from a highly gendered society that was actually doing quite well in accepting gender non-conformity.
“So how does it serve these kids to push them down a medicalised path or play the game of wilfully pretending that they are the opposite sex? How does that help them?”
Chandler’s bill, which was introduced into parliament in February, has won the backing of Morrison, who described the legislation as “terrific” and revealed that he had encouraged her to pursue the issue.
Under the legislation, changes would be made to the Sex Discrimination Act to “clarify” that the operation of single-sex sport on the basis of biological sex was not discriminatory.
Morrison has continued to back in both Chandler and Deves, rejecting calls for the latter to be disendorsed when nominations to the Australian Electoral Commission close on Tuesday.
Despite a backlash among some branch members, Deves has won support from the former MP for the seat, Tony Abbott, and other sitting Liberals.
On Monday the conservative assistant treasurer, Michael Sukkar, described Deves as a “highly credentialed candidate” and any decision to dump her would be up to the NSW division of the party.
“I think she’s apologised for things that she now regrets, but her basic position and her basic campaign in standing up for women’s sport I think is a good thing,” Sukkar told the ABC. “I think she is a great candidate.”
The home affairs minister, Karen Andrews, also said it was a matter for the NSW Liberals to determine but said she did not agree with the remarks made by Deves about trans issues.
“I don’t agree with the comments that have been made but it is for for the NSW Liberals to determine,” Andrews told the ABC.
The Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, said the debate was “divisive within the community but it’s also divisive within the Liberal party”.
“This is just another example of the chaos and division that is there within the Liberal party.”
