I think that another problem here was that, after they made the complaint, the government actually gave them an exemption under the anti-discrimination act to bar any transgender person from accessing the service, therefore giving them a completely legal basis to discriminate against any transgender person, whether they be in desperate need of help or not.
The article makes a good point about the Peel Hotel - a gay club in Melbourne that recently sought and gained an exemption under the anti-discrimination act to be able to bar non gay male people from entering their premises. It gained a lot of media attention, was in the news for about a week, the owners of the hotel recieved death threats, comedians were doing bits on their TV shows about trying to get the bouncers to let them into the club by trying to look as "gay" as possible, the whole deal. And this case didn't even get a mention.
Which just seems absolutely ridiculous to me - so much uproar about people being barred from a pub, when there was nothing said about potentially desperate women being barred from a service that could mean life or death for them. And I find it just plain offensive that the government gave the green light to let it happen when they could have just said, "You've only had ONE transgender person causing trouble - and you want to ban all transgender people from your service? Just deal with this case seperately". I can guarantee that this is what they would have said if the issue was with a lesbian woman, or a woman of a particular age or cultural background, pretty much anything that is covered by our anti-discrimination laws except for transgender status.
We have anti-discrimination laws for a reason. I find the idea that the government can just decide that they don't apply in a case like this, where as a result they are potentially putting other transgender people into danger in the future, on the back of one isolated incident that really didn't require any action of this sort, to be utterly disgusting.
Megan
