This article applies to all organisations in Queensland.

Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 2024 (Qld)

On 29 April 2024, the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 2024 (Qld) (the Amending Act) amended the Anti-Discrimination Act 1991 (Qld) (the Act) to add sex characteristics as an attribute a person must not discriminate against and to define the meaning of gender identity.

Sex Characteristics

Section 7 of the Act has been amended to include “sex characteristics” as an attribute against which a person must not discriminate. Sex characteristics is defined in Schedule 1 of the Act to mean a person’s physical features and development related to the person’s sex and includes:

• genitalia, gonads and other sexual and reproductive parts of a person’s anatomy; and
• the person’s chromosomes, genes and hormones that are related to the person’s sex; and
• the person’s secondary physical features emerging as a result of puberty.

In addition, section 131A of the Act has been amended to make it an offence to incite hatred knowingly or recklessly, serious contempt for, or severe ridicule of a person on the grounds of sex characteristics. While section 131A was amended by the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Act 2024 (Qld), it has since been removed from the Act and relocated into Queensland’s Criminal Code (the Code) by the Criminal Code (Serious Vilification and Hate Crimes) and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2024 (Qld) as the new section 52A of the Code. The penalty for breach of this section is now a maximum of 3 years of imprisonment.

Gender identity

The definition of “gender identity”, an attribute listed in section 7 of the Act against which a person must not discriminate, has been added to the Act in Schedule 1. Gender identity of a person is a person’s internal and individual experience of gender, whether or not it corresponds with the sex assigned to the person at birth. It includes:

• the person’s personal sense of the body; and
• if freely chosen, the modification of the person’s bodily appearance or functions by medical, surgical or other means; and
• other expressions of the person’s gender such as name, dress, speech and behaviour.

Conclusion

Organisations should ensure that they have anti-discrimination policies in place which include discrimination relating to a person’s sex characteristics and that staff are made aware that sex characteristics are not to be discriminated against.