Australia is fast developing a legal and political culture in which there is a price to pay for speaking the truth on controversial issues.

Unfortunately, this is especially the case for Australians who make critical statements about transgender ideology.

In Victoria, prominent MP Moira Deeming is finding out the hard way. Her attendance at a rally in support of women and against transgender ideology has not only cost her Liberal party room membership, but it has forced her into a costly and no doubt personally taxing defamation battle with her former leader.

She is in court defending herself against attacks that have been levelled against her by her own party.

Moira is alleging that Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto defamed her by publicly associating her with neo-Nazis who gatecrashed the Let Women Speak rally she attended. She denies any association and claims that her expulsion from the Liberal party room was in fact about her long-held but controversial views on gender ideology.

As one commentator has noted:

“To Pesutto, Deeming’s real crime is not that she was at a rally gatecrashed by neo-Nazis but that she’s a conservative. That’s why he wanted her gone.”

While the legal issues in the Federal Court concern the law of defamation and its defences, the trial is shaping into a contest over free speech and Moira’s right to express her beliefs without punishment.

She has found herself in the unenviable position of having to turn to the law to protect her right to speak on a politically contentious issue.

Unfortunately, Moira is not the only individual being penalised for expressing her views publicly.

Others in Australia have been drawn into costly and time-consuming litigation for expressing the same critical opinions about transgender ideology.

The Federal Court recently ruled in Tickle v Giggle for Girls Pty Ltd (No 2) [2024] FCA 960 that Roxanne Tickle, a man who identifies as a woman, faced unlawful discrimination when he was denied access to the female-only networking app Giggle.

The app was developed by Sall Grover as a social media site for women; it was to be “a means for women to communicate [in] a digital women-only safe space”.

But the court found that Tickle experienced “indirect discrimination” and ordered Giggle to pay $10,000 in compensation, along with legal costs.

HRLA is assisting Jasmine Sussex, a Victorian breastfeeding expert who is defending herself against a vilification claim in Queensland after publicly stating that men can’t breastfeed.

All three women – Moira Deeming, Sall Grover and Jasmine Sussex – have found themselves under attack for speaking the truth and advocating for women contra transgender ideology.

The trial in Deeming v Pesutto is ongoing in the Federal Court.