The Law Commission's Ia Tangata report should be set aside.
Genspect NZ writes to the Justice Minister, Paul Goldsmith
To Hon Paul Goldsmith
Minister of Justice
Parliament Buildings
Wellington
12 September 2025
Dear Minister
We write on behalf of Genspect New Zealand. Genspect is an international, non-partisan, interdisciplinary organization committed to promoting a healthy, evidence-based approach to sex and gender. We are dedicated to defending biological sex—real, binary, immutable—across health, safeguarding, education, research, law, and society.
We would like to raise our concerns about the Law Commission report Ia Tangata: Protections in the Human Rights Act 1993 for people who are transgender, people who are non-binary and people with innate variations of sex characteristics (NZLC R150, 2025).
We suggest that the report must be set aside from consideration for the following reasons:
The Law Commission proposes that the government acts on a partisan view. The Commission’s working group consisted only of people seeking to maximise the rights of transgender and non-binary people but not seeking to consider other rights. In particular, the existing rights of women and girls, lesbians and gay people are not retained in the proposed law changes. Meanwhile, in New Zealand those who advocate for the retention of sex-based rights for women and those who advocate for lesbian and gay people in the rainbow community over the same decade have had no public funding and next to no support.
The Review's recommendations also run counter to existing policies. These existing policies include:
● The retention of terms like “woman” and other sex-based terms within the health sector, rather than the use of terms such as “people with cervices”, “pregnant people”, and “chest feeding”.
● A more cautious approach to gender medicine for children and young people.
● The removal of the gender identity elements of guidance from the New Zealand curriculum.
We also note the proposed removal of Diversity and Equity responsibilities for public sector chief executives and boards from the Public Services Act.
We consider that the provisions contained within la Tangata would, if adopted, make it impossible for a future government to develop objective policy on gender medicine or how gender identity issues are covered in education.
Genspect's primary concern has always been with the protection of children and young people from the harms of medicalisation that is not supported by good quality evidence and that, we believe, has a high risk-benefit ratio. Thus, we are concerned that la Tangata's proposed amendment to the Human Rights Act - to prioritise gender identity over biological sex - would embed rights to gender medicine treatment that fails to uphold the longstanding bioethical principle of ‘first do no harm’. Such treatment may create substantive risks to future fertility, sexual function and physical health and is likely to set children and young people on a lifelong path of medicalisation that not only fails to prevent suicides but is likely to actually increase the risk of completed suicides.
The recent UK Supreme Court decision in the “For Women Scotland” case recognised that women’s rights need protection, and that this could not be achieved without a definition of “sex”. In that decision the Court stated that the legal definition of "sex" (for the purposes of the Equality Act 2010) related to biological sex, not to gender identity, and that the definition of “a woman" was "an adult human female". The justices opined that failure to clarify the meaning of sex in the United Kingdom Equalities Act would create a law that lacked coherence. (Supreme Court, 2025.)
The blog article Straight if removed shows how this works
By contrast, Ia Tangata by not considering a definition of sex in the Human Rights Act necessary it can be interpreted as meaning something other than biological sex. If the term "sex" is not defined as "biological sex" (an objective fact) but is allowed to incorporate "gender identity" (a subjective belief), neither women (nor men) can be accurately counted in statistics nor identified in health data, nor be provided with services that meet their needs. Heterosexual people who identify as the opposite sex, along with their heterosexual partners, would be deemed to have a same-sex sexual orientation. The approach would nullify the protected characteristic of sexual orientation. As the UK Supreme Court justices, in the “For Women Scotland” case remarked, "Same sex attracted people are attracted to others of the same sex, not to a gender recognition certificate”.(Hewitt, 2025)
We note the considerable public power that has already accrued to transgender and non-binary identified people over a short time frame. As well as the changes listed above there has also been considerable pressure applied to public servants and others to believe that everyone has a “gender identity”.(HRC, 2020) Of particular interest to Genspect we note that clinical organisatíons such as those in psychotherapy, counselling and psychology have recently implemented policy that precludes their members from providing holistic care when gender confusion is an issue. (Free Speech Union New Zealand, 2025; Psychologists Board, 2019; Rivers, 2024) This puts them at odds with both the Ministry of Health guidance that the starting point of care is an holistic assessment (Ministry of Health, 2024) and with the intent of the Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation, which was to encourage respectful conversations about sex and gender.
Both here and overseas, we note that gender identity law and policy have become increasingly unpopular with the public. We draw your attention to the results of surveys of public opinion in both the United Kingdom and in New Zealand. The summary of attitudes to transgender rights in reports from YouGov for 2020 (Yougov, 2020) and 2024 (Yougov, 2024) respectively indicate that a large majority of adults are not in favour of the special concessions that are claimed by transgender activists as human rights. (Family First, 2024)
Minister, we respectfully ask that you set aside the Law Commission’s Ia Tangata and consider approaches that would protect the interests of women and girls and sexual orientation rights which cannot be achieved without a Human Rights Act definition of sex.
Bibliography
Family First. (2024, May 14). SURVEY: Opposition To Puberty Blockers & Gender Ideology For Children. Family First NZ. https://familyfirst.org.nz/2024/05/15/media-release-opposition-to-puberty-blockers-gender-ideology-for-children-poll/
Free Speech Union New Zealand. (2025). Why is an experienced counsellor under fire? Free Speech Union. https://www.fsu.nz/blog/why-is-an-experienced-counsellor-under-fir
Hewitt, D. (2025, April 21). Straight on Paper: The supreme significance of the Lesbian Interveners. Void If Removed. (Link above)
Human Rights Commission. (2020). PRISM : Human Rights Issues Relating to Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression, and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC) in Aotearoa New Zealand (P. 50; p. Page 50). Human Rights Commission. https://www.hrc.co.nz/files/9215/9253/7296/HRC_PRISM_SOGIESC_Report_June_2020_FINAL.pdf
Ministry of Health. (2024, November 21). Position Statement on the Use of Puberty Blockers. https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/2024-11/Position_Statement_on_the_Use_of_Puberty_Blockers.pdf
Psychologists Board. (2019). Best Practice Guideline: Working with sex, sexuality, and gender diverse clients (p. 22). Psychologists Board. https://psychologistsboard.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Sex-sexuality-and-gender-diversity-270819.pdf
Rivers, J. (2024, December 8). Has the Association of Psychotherapists Aotearoa New Zealand (APANZ) forgotten what psychotherapy is for? [Substack newsletter]. Inspecting Gender. https://genspect.substack.com/p/has-the-association-of-psychotherapists
Supreme Court. (2025). For Women Scotland Ltd (Appellant) v The Scottish Ministers (Respondent). Retrieved November 30, 2024, from https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2024-0042.htm
Yougov. (2020). Where does the British public stand on transgender rights in 2020? https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/30906-where-does-british-public-stand-transgender-rights
Yougov. (2024). Where does the British public stand on transgender rights in 2024/25? Yougov. https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/51545-where-does-the-british-public-stand-on-transgender-rights-in-202425
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