'It was a different time': Julia Gillard breaks her silence on deleting 'woman' from the law

Julia Gillard has defended her government's decision to strip the definitions of "man" and "woman" out of the Sex Discrimination Act, telling a British audience the 2013 change was made in "a different time". They're her first public comments on the amendment that Australian courts now read as putting gender identity ahead of biological sex, and they land while two Australian women are still fighting six figure legal battles born of that shift.

The former prime minister was questioned from the floor after delivering the 2026 Cockcroft Rutherford Lecture at the University of Manchester on Wednesday evening, The Australian reports. Video of the exchange is now circulating on X.

Ms Gillard first suggested the issue wouldn't be of interest to a British audience, then told her questioner the concerns "were not raised by anyone" when the legislation came before Parliament "because they simply weren't a matter of public discourse the way they are today".

"It was a different time. So it is an error to uplift what we know now and the public discourse now and just putting it down to 14 years ago."

The Sex Discrimination Amendment (Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Intersex Status) Act 2013 repealed the Act's definitions of "man" and "woman", until then defined as a member of the male or female sex, and added gender identity, sexual orientation and intersex status as protected attributes. It passed in the final months of the Gillard government. The consequences are no longer theoretical. They have names.

Giggle v Tickle: Sall Grover ordered to pay $20,000 for keeping a biological male off a women's app

Sall Grover built Giggle for Girls as an online space for women, with membership checked against a photo. When she reviewed a photo submitted by Roxanne Tickle, who was born male and identifies as a woman, she removed Tickle from the app.

Because Ms Gillard's amendment had deleted the definition of "woman" from the Act, the Federal Court found in 2024 that sex is "changeable and not necessarily binary" and that Ms Grover had discriminated on the basis of gender identity. In May the Full Federal Court dismissed her appeal, upgraded the finding to direct discrimination and doubled the damages awarded to Tickle from $10,000 to $20,000.

Ms Grover is now seeking special leave to appeal to the High Court of Australia, asking it to decide whether "woman" in Australian law still has a biological meaning at all. Ms Gillard declined to comment on the case on Wednesday because it's under appeal.

Kirralie Smith: $95,000 over posts about transgender players in women's soccer

Binary Australia spokeswoman Kirralie Smith was ordered in December to pay $95,000 after the NSW Local Court found she had unlawfully vilified two transgender soccer players in posts on X, the first finding of its kind under section 38S of the NSW Anti-Discrimination Act. Deputy Chief Magistrate Sharon Freund awarded $55,000 to one complainant and $40,000 to the other, and ordered a public apology across Ms Smith's social media.

Ms Smith is appealing to the NSW Supreme Court and won a stay of the orders on New Year's Eve, so nothing is payable while the appeal runs. She maintains she was reporting accurate, publicly available information and asking a reasonable question about fairness in women's sport.

Her case runs under NSW law rather than the federal Act Ms Gillard amended. But campaigners including Women's Forum Australia argue the two cases are products of the same legal architecture: gender identity written into anti-discrimination law, biological sex written out, and women who object answering for it in court.

Protests from Hay-on-Wye to the Australian High Commission in London

About a dozen pro women activists protested outside the Manchester lecture, telling audience members "Julia Gillard is no feminist", according to The Australian. A pamphlet handed to passersby claimed Australian women no longer have the right to single sex spaces and that males who identify as women can't be excluded from women's services.

Manchester is at least the fourth confrontation to find Ms Gillard in Britain since late May. At the Hay literary festival, two women unfurled a banner reading "Julia Gillard Destroyer of Women's Rights" before the moderator cut off their question, days after around 100 people rallied outside the Australian High Commission in London in support of Ms Grover, calling for Australia to follow the UK Supreme Court's ruling that sex in equality law means biological sex. And on 11 June, protesters trailed Ms Gillard outside the Women's Prize for Fiction venue in London chanting about Tickle v Giggle, in scenes viewed more than 146,000 times on X.

Claire Chandler said the 'gotcha' dodge was no game three years ago

Ms Gillard has for years declined to answer the question "what is a woman?", dismissing it as a "gotcha question". Claire Chandler, the Tasmanian Liberal senator who has led the parliamentary pushback on the 2013 changes and introduced the Save Women's Sport Bill, told the Senate in 2023 that the dodge "was no game", arguing the removal of the definition had led directly "to some of the most perverse policy decisions Australia has ever witnessed".

One Nation has pledged to write 'woman' back into the Sex Discrimination Act

One Nation has put its position on the record. Under its Stand Up For Aussie Women pledge, the party has committed to introducing an amendment to the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 to restore the biological definition of women and men, with Pauline Hanson pledging that One Nation "will always fight for these basic rights for Australian women". Senator Hanson has already put a Sex Discrimination Bill before the Senate to confirm that there are two genders in Australian law, and One Nation backed Senator Chandler's Save Women's Sport Bill. The party argues the fix is straightforward: put the definitions Ms Gillard removed back where they were.

Ms Gillard was in Manchester in her role as chair of the Wellcome Trust, and closed the lecture by advising future political leaders that their most precious resource is time. Sall Grover and Kirralie Smith are spending theirs in court. The definition of "woman" was deleted in a different time, and it's still gone.