Claire Chandler

Claire Chandler (born 1 June 1990) is an Australian politician who was elected as a Senator for Tasmania at the 2019 Australian federal election. She is a member of the Liberal Party.

Quotes

2020

• So many women have contacted me with concerns about this issue (of trans activist claims on female sport) but they are worried that if they speak publicly, or even internally, they might face consequences at their club or at their work.
  How do Australians know that they are able to speak freely about women's rights. The idea that someone could lose their job or be banned from the sport they love for acknowledging that [biological] sex exists should be alarming to every fair-minded Australian.
  • "Women in sport 'afraid' to speak up against trans activists: Senator Claire Chandler", The Australian (1 September 2020)

• Being summoned by a quasi-judicial body to appear and explain why I say that males shouldn't be in female change rooms or in female sporting competitions is an indictment on the state of free speech in this country. [...] It is yet another example of the assault on truth and the assault on the very meaning of the word 'woman' by activists who are determined to remove every sex-based right that women around the world have, and allow anyone who identifies as a woman into women's sports and women's spaces. I will not be silenced.
  • Cited in "Cops go with the flow on 'fluid gender'", The Australian (4 September 2020)
  • Senator Chandler had been called in for a meeting with Tasmania's anti-discrimination commissioner Sarah Bolton on 1 October. This followed Chandler's article (originally published by The Mercury) responding to a letter objecting to cancel culture published in the New York-based Harper's Magazine which was signed by 150 writers in total, including Margaret Atwood, Noam Chomsky, Salman Rushdie and J.K. Rowling.

• For several months, Rugby Australia has been in possession of a transgender participation guideline developed by World Rugby in consultation with developmental biologists, medical experts and sport scientists.
  The World Rugby Guideline runs to 38 pages. It has a reference list of 45 scientific reports. It finds that it is neither safe nor fair for transgender players who are biologically male to play in women's rugby, demonstrating with significant rigour that a situation where a male player tackles a female creates "a minimum of 20 to 30 per cent greater risk for those female players". Rugby Australia is yet to respond to this document or release it publicly.
  On Thursday, Rugby Australia released its own trans inclusion guidelines. It contains no references to scientific reports and doesn't mention the World Rugby findings of significantly increased head and neck injury risk to female players. It lays out a procedure to allow biological males identifying as women to play women's rugby.
  • "Females want a sporting chance", The Australian (2 October 2020)
  • The complaint against Chandler accepted by Tasmania's anti-discrimination commissioner was later withdrawn after Chandler refused to sign a confidentiality agreement.

• This decision, however, only further highlights the dangerous absurdity of Rugby Australia, Sport Australia, the AFL and other major sports in adopting the opposite position that 'inclusiveness' is more important than women’s safety. [...] If it is not safe or fair for a professional female rugby player to have to play against biological males, then it isn’t safe or fair for Australian women playing at their local club either.
  • "Female pushback over trans sport rules", The Australian (12 October 2020)
  • World Rugby had opposed proposals to accept trans players into women's rugby, in part, fearing litigation because of the increased risk of injury to women. Eight Australian sports bodies had allowed transwomen into women's sports a few days earlier.

2022–present

• [Introducing her "Save Women's Sport Bill"] Women’s sport exists to provide separate competition for females, in acknowledgement that males have numerous physical advantages over females in the sporting arena.
  When the bill comes to a vote, Parliamentarians will have a simple question to answer: Do you agree that women and girls have the right to play single-sex sport?
  • Speaking in the Senate, as cited in "Morrison backs bill excluding female trans athletes from women’s sport", The Sydney Morning Herald (22 February 2022)
  • Senator Chandler's bill (which failed to pass) was an attempt to clarify the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (as amended in 2013) that restricting female sports to biological women was legal.