The Gender Wars Down Under

A win against the eSafety commissioner. Queer theory in schools. The schools to clinic pipeline. State sanctioned sexual abuse in Victorian prisons. The Lesbian Action Group in Court.

Gender identity ideology has been imposed on an unsuspecting Australian public and is now deeply embedded into law, policy, education, politics and healthcare. This is a top-down effort by politicians and a bureaucratic elite that uses legal and quasi-legal institutions and quangos to silence, misdirect and deny what’s really happening in Australia.

Below are the latest stories from Australian women fighting for free speech, women’s rights and child safeguarding in schools.

Celine Against the eSafety Machine

Celine Baumgarten wins her case against e-Safety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant

In 2024 Celine Baumgarten, a young single mum from Western Sydney criticised a Victorian primary school for holding a “Queer Club” for children aged 8–12 who identified as LGBTQi+. Baumgarten’s X post questioned the appropriateness of teaching “queer theory” at school and in particular to primary school children.

While Baumgarten’s post did not meet the legal definition of cyber abuse, the eSafety commissioner issued an “informal notice” to X resulting in the post being geoblocked in Australia. With the help of the Free Speech Union, Baumgarten appealed to the Victorian Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) where she won her case after the ART ruled “informal notices” were unlawful.

The eSafety commission then appealed the ART decision to the Federal Court of Australia arguing that the ART lacked jurisdiction to review the matter.

The appeal was heard by the Full Bench of the Federal Court that ruled the informal “complaint alert” amounted to a removal notice (because it amounted to X blocking the post) and was therefore reviewable by the ART.

The Federal Court ruling prevents the eSafety commissioner from bypassing statutory safeguards including transparency, appeal rights, and due process by labelling the action “informal.”

This is an embarrassing loss for a commissioner who has tried on several other occasions to shut down those who challenge gender identity ideology by censoring speech and framing dissent as “discrimination” “harm” and “hate.”

Following her win at the Federal Court, Celine Baumgarten posted on X:

It’s a win for free speech, it’s a win for parental rights and it’s a win for Australia.”

Bestiality and incest in LGBTQi+ school training

South Australian mum, Nicki Gaylard and her daughter Courtney Gaylard.

Another mother challenging the imposition of “queer theory” in schools is South Australian mother of six, Nicki Gaylard.

In March 2024, Nicki’s 14-year-old daughter, Courtney and other Year 9 girls from Renmark High School were pulled out of class to attend an hour-long session by external facilitators who promote LGBTQI+ “inclusivity, diversity and acceptance.” Headspace, the federally funded NGO that received up to $120 million dollars in 2024 -2025 engaged a third-party presenter to deliver a training session to the students because of their “lived experience” of being “trans”.

The training session included a PowerPoint presentation that made references to bestiality and incest including “brother love,” “sister love,” and “sibling sex” as well as images of “trans bodies” that showed surgical scars from double mastectomies.

14-year-old, Emelia Wundenberg told ABC news that the presenter referenced their own sexual preferences and spoke in sexually explicit terms after which the students were told what each of the initials within the LGBTQi+ meant while the meaning of each word was displayed on the screen. Emelia said:

“There was a slide for what the ‘plus’ means, and they just started randomly saying words that no-one knew, like bestiality.”

The LGBTQi+ training session occurred without teacher supervision, prior parental consent, or proper vetting of the third-party presenter.

Nicki Gaylard, is taking legal action against the South Australian Department for Education over the incident.

Victorian School’s Secret Social Transition Policy

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan who supports teaching five-year-olds gender ideology

In the state of Victoria, the Respectful Relationships programme is mandated statewide by the Department of Education (DoE). In 2023 the school training was quietly updated to include gender identity concepts that include the notion that a child’s body parts may not match their “gender identity” and promote the acceptance and inclusion of trans-identified males in female sports.

The Victorian DoE’s LGBTIQ+ Student Support Policy actively encourages schools to develop a “gender affirmation student support plan” that permits the secret social transitioning of students without parental consent or involvement.

The U.K.’s Cass Review, an independent four-year review of NHS gender identity services addressed the issue regarding the social transitioning of children: changing a child’s name, pronouns, clothing, appearance etc. and found it to be a significant psychosocial step that helps “lock in” a child’s belief that they may be “born in the wrong body” or have a “gender identity” different from their biological sex.

Social transition is known as the “schools to clinic pipeline” because it increases the likelihood that a child or young person will proceed onto puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and sex modification surgeries.

The Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan defended the teaching of gender identity for children as young as five-years old and framed any opposition to it as “reckless.”

While parent groups including Parents of Adolescents with Gender Distress (PAGD) concerned clinicians and many others argue it creates safeguarding risks and treats contested beliefs as fact.

Corrections Victoria – sexual abuse in women’s prison

In 2007, Clinton Rintoull, murdered a Sudanese refugee, Liep Gony by beating him repeatedly about the head with a metal pole. Rintoull who was 22 at the time was sentenced to 20 years in prison with a non-parole period of 16 years. During his incarceration, Rintoull began to “identify” as a woman and applied to be transferred to the female estate.

Despite prison staff warning Corrections Victoria about the “unacceptable risk” to women prisoners and concerns about his motives for his “trans identification,” it approved Rintoull’s move to the minimum-security women’s prison - HM Tarrengower near Maldon, Victoria in 2022.

Two months after arriving at Tarrengower, Rintoull sexually assaulted a vulnerable female prisoner in the washroom. The victim was a young mother with a baby who was described as “fragile” and with a history of rape and sexual trauma.

The victim filed a civil lawsuit against the Victorian government alleging negligence in the transfer and failure to protect her. In early February 2026 the Victorian government reached a confidential settlement with the victim and paid her an undisclosed amount.

The sexual assault by Rintoull did not result in criminal charges. Just think about that for a moment – a sexual crime is committed by a violent murderer against a woman who is locked in with no means of escape. The prison authorities responsible for protecting all women in their care failed to charge him - nor do they add any extra time to his original sentence - Rintoull was simply moved back to the male prison Langi Kal Kal prison farm near Ballarat from which he was paroled in 2024.

When questioned, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan repeatedly refused to disclose details of the payout, including the amount, whether Rintoull had undergone sex modification surgery (and if so, whether taxpayers funded it), or the decision-making process to move Rintoull to a women’s prison - describing it as a “private matter.”

Clinton Rintoull convicted murderer who sexually assaulted a female prisoner and got away with it.

The Lesbian Action Group in Federal Court in Victoria

Below is a message from the Lesbian Action Group regarding the court case to be held in Victoria on 23 and 24 February.

Please consider donating to LAG’s court costs.

In 2023 LAG applied to the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) for a five-year temporary exemption under the Sex Discrimination Act (SDA)1984 to hold public events for “lesbians born female.” The AHRC said no and ruled it unlawful to discriminate on the basis of gender identity and stated that “sex is non-binary and changeable.”

LAG then appealed to the Administrative Review Tribunal that upheld the AHRC’s decision in January 2025 and then further appealed to the Federal Court of Australia. LAG’s appeal will be heard over two days - the 23^rd and 24th February in Victoria.

What’s at stake is whether lesbians who by definition are women who are attracted to other women, are allowed to set boundaries based on biological sex, or whether the law now requires lesbians to include men who simply identify as “lesbians” into their dating pools and social spaces.

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of this case – the court is ruling on whether or not, as a society we still believe in facts, human biology and in the evidence of our own eyes.

LAG’s appeal is directly linked to another important Australian court case – Tickle v Giggle.

In August 2025 LAG was granted leave to intervene in the Full Federal Court appeal of Tickle v Giggle — the landmark case brought by a trans identified man, Roxanne Tickle against Sall Grover and her women-only social media app Giggle for Girls.

The ruling in the first court case was lost by Grover on the grounds of “indirect discrimination”, but Grover appealed this decision which was heard in Sydney at the Federal Court in 2025.

During Grover’s appeal, LAG’s barristers argued that sex is not “non-binary and changeable,” that single-sex spaces are lawful and necessary, and that women and lesbians are entitled to boundaries based on biological reality.

These two cases are now legally and ideologically intertwined. Both turn on the same question: does the SDA protect sex-based rights or has “gender identity” rewritten the meaning of “sex” and “woman” in Australian law and institutional policy.

The ruling may erase the very concept of same-sex attraction if it is now redefined to include males.

LAG refuses to watch the next generation of lesbians be told they must accept heterosexual men in their private and public spaces.

The issues — freedom of association, the proper interpretation of “sex” in Commonwealth law, the limits of anti-discrimination exemptions affect every woman’s group, sporting body, and single-sex service in the country.

The story is still being written. But one thing is clear: the women who built lesbian visibility in the 1970s, 80s and 90s are not prepared to watch it dismantled in the 2020s.

Same fight.

Same sex.

Same rights.