It looks like Queensland is about to join most other states in Australia and allow people to change their sex on their birth certificate. Legislation to achieve this was introduced into the Queensland Parliament in December of 2022.

New South Wales still requires reassignment surgery before the paperwork can be altered.

But overall, it is becoming very easy in Australia for a man to say he is a woman, or a woman to say she is a man.

The sex you were born – either male or female – is becoming increasingly irrelevant. It is now a matter of male and female or any combination of these, perhaps none of these, on any given day.

Whatever Trevor.

In the 2021 Census, there were 12.98 million women, 12.75 million men, and 43,220 people – or 0.17 per cent – who identified themselves as non-binary.

The 2016 Census began the process of offering non-binary options for self-identification – and it noted 1,260 people who identified as gender diverse.

The numbers are important.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics feeds off the national Census which is held every five years. The ABS and the Census provide governments, at all levels, with the data they need to plan programs, direct funding and stay ahead of social needs, infrastructure, adjust immigration levels, and the like.

Data determines where a new hospital might go, or a new school. Where train services are needed, a new road, or the future demand for aged care facilities.

Data is King. And Queen.

And sex is an important part of the data set.

It helps guide planning on social services, domestic violence support, female-only prisons and hospitals. There’s the Women and Children’s Hospital in Melbourne for example and also Geelong, although curiously the Geelong facility has no plans to offer maternity facilities.

So, when men can say – with a flick of a pen – that they’re women – or women can say they’re men, what does this do to the accuracy of that data collected?

Today – it is absolutely possible for those population statistics to be messed with.

Let’s say, overnight, that 2.75 million people currently registered on their birth certificates as men decide that tomorrow they want to be considered as women.

Suddenly, Australia has 15.73 million women and 10 million men.

You can hear the panic in the hospital corridors, courts, and prisons.

Millions – billions – of dollars will need to be redirected to women’s needs. Millions and billions will need to be taken from male services and provisions.

A very easy example of how data can be used – and abused – is provided by Victoria.

During the 2022 State Election Campaign, Premier Daniel Andrews chased the women’s vote like a ferret down a rabbit burrow. He smoked out the female vote with a $71 million promise to create 20 ‘comprehensive women’s health clinics’ across Victoria.

These would effectively provide a dedicated site for women’s-only health needs, gynaecological in theme including period pain, polycystic ovaries, pregnancy, contraception, menopause, endometriosis, and so on.

But the question is this: if men choose to be considered women, or women choose to be considered men – how will the state really know how many women actually need their help?

Are they planning for 5 million women, or 2 million, or 10 million?

When they say they’re women, are they really women, or are they men?

If they say they’re men, are they really women?

Should they be building more men’s health facilities, or women’s health facilities?

And say nothing for the planning dilemma around those who nominate as non-binary. They are metaphorically neither acorn nor gum leaf.

Good luck doing the maths and architecture on that.

And further good luck to the bureaucrat who says it’s going to be roughly a 50:50 split, no matter what the Census says. How rude? How offensive? How wrong? How dare he or she? Where is the truth in that?

Good luck also to police on the hunt for a man – who’s actually a woman – and vice versa.

However, it does resolve the problem of attracting more women into politics. Overnight, every man in the Federal Cabinet could self-declare as female – and voila – history: an all-female front bench looking fabulous in their three-piece suits.

It’s a bit like the Premier’s own words regarding alleged victims of sexual violence: ‘I see you, I hear you, I believe you.’ But in this case, governments simply can’t afford to believe the data. And they need way more than seeing, hearing. and believing. Guessing might be the new go-to policy formula.

Messing with the maths – playing loose with biological truth – is not going to make for good decision making.