Australian Senate Gags Debate on Bill To Define A Man And Woman

Labor and the Greens have blocked debate on legislation that would have provided a clear definition of a man and a woman in Australia.

Liberal Senator Alex Antic introduced the Sex Discrimination Amendment (Restoring Biological Definitions) Act 2025 at the end of the recent parliamentary session.

The bill (pdf) specifically repeals the definition of gender identity and omits every occurrence of the word “gender identity.”

In addition, the bill provides a clear definition for men and women and substitutes the word “different sex” with “the opposite sex.”

“Man means a member of the male sex irrespective of age. Woman means a member of the female sex irrespective of age,” the bill states.

Antic said the issue would not go away and described the situation as “absolutely unbelievable.”

“The Bill was designed to protect women’s sport and women’s spaces but Labor and the Greens wouldn’t allow it to pass into the second reading,” he said in a post to X.

Antic said the Bill’s aim was to restore the definitions of a man and a woman, which had been “deleted in 2013” by the Labor government.

“Yes, you heard that right, as presently enacted, the Sex Discrimination Act has no working understanding of what constitutes a man or a woman,” he told supporters on Aug. 1.

“My Bill also proposed to remove the concept of ‘gender identity’ from the Act altogether, which the Labor government added as a category of protected classes.”

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