Ro Edge: Save Women's Sport Spokesperson on the Government taking a watching brief on transgender involvement in community sport

The Government's changed its tune on transgender people participating in community sports.  

A policy in the New Zealand First-National Coalition agreement threatened to withhold public funding if sports bodies didn't separate trans athletes from grassroots competitions.  

After feedback from Sport New Zealand, Sport and Recreation Minister Chris Bishop says the government will now take a watching brief.  

Save Women's Sport spokesperson Ro Edge told Mike Hosking that she thinks Bishop's been given inaccurate information.  

She says a letter she received from Bishop wrongly stated Sport NZ's guidelines have exemptions for fairness and safety in female sport. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Change your heart from the government over transgender sport and funding.
So the threat was to cut funding to sport that
did not comply with a push to separate transgender athletes
from grassroots competition. So it was part of the coalition
deal between New Zealand First and National. They will now
instead be taking a quote unquote watching brief. This is
after extensive feedback from sport in New Zealand apparently, who
have advocated for flexibility, opposing a one size fits all solution. Now.

(00:23):
Row Edge is the co founder of Saved Women's Sport
and is with this road. Very good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Good morning Mane.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
You'd be disappointed, Yeah, I am.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
But look I could be wrong, but there's something about
this that actually reeks of government bureaucrats trying to create
problems for the coalition government by feeding a busy minister
and accurate information. Chris Bishop contacted me by email about
two or three weeks ago and sent me a letter.
In it he wrongly stated that Sport New Zellain's transgender
guidelines had exemptions for ennis and safety in relation to

(00:53):
female sport, and they don't at all. So yeah, it
just feels like Bishop's been manipulated by officials, because I
would have thought he that have brought a fair minded
and reasonable view to this based on science and evidence,
not the catch opinions of Sport New Zealand, which unfortunately
they've long since played their cards on the table and
they're not a mutual party in this no.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
I know. Having said that, we've also got Winston Peters
on later and it's a back to. I think this
was more his idea than it was National Party's idea
and therefore that's a back down on his part. So
I'll be interested to hear what he's got to say
about this. So how do we get around this, because
I mean part of the argument from Sport New Zealand
is it's you know, each individual sport does each It's
a mess, isn't it, because we don't know where we're

(01:31):
at it.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, well it's been created. A mess has been created
by Sport New Zealand developing these guiding principles. If they
wanted to allow sports to step back and create policies
that were right for each sport, they would remove those
guiding principles and that element of control. Because Sport New
Zealand is the funding leaver holds the funding leaver for
all sports, so if they don't comply with Sport New

(01:53):
Zealand's guidelines, sports are worried that those funding leavers will
be pulled. So if they do want to stay back
and allow sports to make the decision themselves, then they
need to take away the guiding principles and allow sports
for freedom to do that. We recently saw International Cricket
came out to protect the female category and New Zealand
Cricket had always told me they would follow their international

(02:15):
federation's guidelines, but because of Sport New Zealand's guiding principles,
I believe they haven't. And in every sport I speak
to say that we've got to follow those and so
our hands are tired. We're not making any progress. You know.
The only sport we've made progress with, apart from boxing
because Steve Hartley, the president of Boxing New Zealand obviously
doesn't want to condone male violence against women, is triathlon.

(02:38):
And that's because last year they were the only sport
descend a representative to the International Summit on Women's Sport
over in Colorado. So it's you know, I mean, it's
really disappointing. Might we play sport with our bodies, not
our identity exactly? And we all know that male bodies
are bigger, stronger and faster than females.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Interesting, right, all right, good catch, uppreciative very much, row Edge,
who's the Saved Women's sport spokesperson? For more from newstalkst B,
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