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Well, my name's Beth Johnson, and I'm here tonight representing Speak up for women. We are talking about the implications of sex self identification within the births, deaths and marriages Bill. And this has been a nationwide tour year of of of doing kind of discussions. That's right. Yes. This is our seventh event, I think, and part of our nationwide tour. And how have the, uh, events been received Really positive from the people that have attended the events. And, um, we've had preschool protests in Nelson, and we [00:00:30] expect a peaceful protest here later tonight. Can you, um, give me a sense of of who's in the audiences for these events and and kind of the the the demographics. Well, you're more than welcome to come inside and and hear and see. See for yourself. Um, we have a really mixed group of people, mostly women, um, of all ranges of ages. Uh, a lot of lesbian women. Um, bisexuals. We usually have some men and some transsexual supporter events as well. And what What are the key messages that you want to kind of get out tonight? [00:01:00] We're discussing the fact that biological sex sometimes matters in life and should remain protected in law. And this has implications for, um, access and eligibility to single sex spaces and services. It has implications for the definition of, um, sexual attraction and homosexual, for example. So, um, biological sex exists. It matters, and it shouldn't be entirely replaced by the concept of gender identity in our laws. And if that is going to happen, [00:01:30] this change a change this big must go to select committee so that we can have a proper, robust Democratic public debate about it. So was speak up for women. Um formed for this one issue? Yes. Speak up for women was formed in 2018, um to, uh, put pressure on the government to reconsider the sex self identification clause, which had been added into the bill after public submissions had closed. So Tracy Martin deferred the bill in 2019 when it became apparent [00:02:00] that this undemocratic process had been followed. So two years later, we have a new government who is intent on pushing the bill through to a second reading, and we're saying, have those fundamental legal issues been addressed? Tracy Martin identified them from a crown law opinion. Have they been addressed? Will the public have an opportunity to submit on these fundamental changes? And that's what we're discussing. And ultimately, what do you What? What? What do you want to see happen? Ultimately, we want this [00:02:30] bill to go to select committee so New Zealanders can submit. We want to have a conversation about how we can advance the rights and the life outcomes of transgender people without impacting the rights of women and girls. And we believe that that's possible and that that conversation can happen. It's not happening yet. Throughout the last events that you've had, um, there has been some opposition. Has that surprised you? Uh, no. It hasn't surprised us, because ever since we formed in [00:03:00] 2018, there's been a concerted smear campaign against our group. Um, our political opponents have vested in us not being heard because they want this bill to pass unchallenged. So there's been a lot of effort gone into not hearing our perspective. Um, I think that's changing now. I think people realise that we are reasonable. We've got genuine concerns and that we want to work on solutions. And when you say smear campaign. What? What? What? What? What's been happening? We've been called a hate group. We've been called [00:03:30] anti Trans. We've been called bigots. Um, you name it. It's been said, um, I won't name the organisations that have, um perpetuated it through the media, but it's been, um, pretty concerted, and it's been designed to, um, stop the New Zealand public from listening to what we have to say.
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