Tomorrow (18 Jan), a NSW Parliamentary Cte, chaired by Mark Latham, will open an 'online questionnaire' to gauge community views about Latham's transphobic Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020.
The Inquiry's homepage is below. 1/
https://parliament.nsw.gov.au/committees/inquiries/Pages/inquiry-details.aspx?pk=2610

As my post from last August explains, this Bill is the worst attack on LGBTI rights, and especially trans and gender diverse rights, in Australia this century. 2/ https://alastairlawrie.net/2020/08/09/i-stand-with-trans-kids-and-against-mark-latham/

While the community survey approach is not new (and was actually used last year in relation to Latham's seperate 'Religious Freedoms' Bill), one thing that does seem unprecedented is the fact the Committee will only accept more detailed submissions 'by invitation'. 3/

The way this is drafted, particularly the use of 'expert with specialist knowledge in the field', makes it sound like people whose rights are directly affected by this Bill (such as trans kids themselves) will be ltd to answering the questionnaire. Which seems extraordinary. 4/

Now, it is possible that non-Latham members of the Committee have supported this approach in an attempt to minimise the damage that will be inflicted by the divisive public debate around this legislation. In which case I obviously hope they succeed. 5/

However, my view is there is now only one way to avoid such a harmful outcome - and that is for both the NSW Government, and Opposition, to publicly and unequivocally commit to voting against this dangerous, disgusting Bill.
Over to you @smitchellmlc and @pruecar. /6 #nswpol