Trans women in sport politicised and weaponised in election campaign as other issues ignored

The Prime Minister’s hand-picked candidate running in the seat of Warringah is becoming a burden for the Liberal party early on in the election campaign for her claims about transgender women.

Katherine Deves is campaigning to have transgender women banned from sport but has had to apologise twice in the past week as further statements and social media posts are unearthed with claims including, “Half of all males with trans identities are sex offenders” and likening them to Nazis.

Scott Morrison has backed away after starting the week in full support of Deves.

It is a highly emotive issue. Yet concern over trans athletes borders on a moral panic considering the population base we are talking about — in the 2016 Australian census, 100 people described themselves as trans female. That is 0.0004 per cent of the population.

Deves is running against the sitting member for Warringah, Independent Zali Steggall, a former elite athlete and Olympic medallist.

“[This creates] a diversion to hide the lack of policy around integrity and around pay equity for women by creating this, I think, quite side-lined fight that is divisive,” Stegall told The Ticket.

“It’s incredibly damaging for many people in the community but it’s also a bit of a dog whistle to the more conservative side of politics at a time where we have such bigger issues, so I support inclusion.

“International sporting bodies, national federations, they  have rules in place to deal with this.

“It is just not the problem that they are making it out to be.”

Steggall has also called for Deves to be disendorsed by the Liberal Party.

There are some big names globally who advocate for the banning of transgender athletes from the women's category; tennis great Martina Navratilova,