"However, WA's equal opportunity laws provide scant coverage in the area of gender identity discrimination, and there are wide exemptions to the law on the grounds of gender identity and sexual orientation."

Mr Swift said the current laws clearly fail to cover people with a minority gender identity.

"The current WA laws only provide anti-discrimination protection to those transgender people who have undergone sexual reassignment surgery and have been certified by a state government body as being of a new gender," Mr Swift said.

"This means most transgender people are not protected in WA, especially if they are in the process of transitioning from one gender to another or if they cannot undergo reassignment surgery due to medical reasons or the costly nature of such surgery."

"It is clear the Barnett Government needs to revisit the laws, especially in relation to gender identity discrimination, and fix the deficiencies and exemptions in the law."

Mr Swift said that GALE was ready to provide expertise and advice to help the WA Government with the task of fixing the problems with WA's anti-discrimination laws.

NOTE – POLL RESULTS:

The Galaxy Poll results are available on the internet at:

http://www.equality.org.au/GalaxyPoll-AntiDiscrimination.pdf 

MEDIA COMMENT:

Rod Swift   GALE media spokesperson 0417 890 111

Shane Cucow GALE co-convenor  0400 424 933

Kitty Hawkins GALE co-convenor   0414 846 153

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