We are in an Orwellian state

"Once the state can force you to believe something that is not true, or to accept something that is so blatantly not true, it can force you to accept anything."

Those are Sall Grover's words, and I'd urge you to take a minute to watch her short video here.

She is right. This is dangerous, and it is serious.

For those not familiar with Sall’s story, in 2020 she founded Giggle for Girls, a mobile app designed as a safe female-only space to allow women to network free from the advances of predatory men.

Being a female-only space, Giggle for Girls very quickly became the target of trans activists who took issue with men who identify as women being excluded from the site. And it wasn’t long before one of those excluded challenged the legal basis for the exclusion in the courts with a subsequent ruling whose effect was that certain males were required to be treated as women for the purposes of access to the platform.

After being ordered to pay $10,000 in damages, Sall appealed to the Full Federal Court. The appeal failed and the damages were increased to $20,000. On 10 September the High Court refused to hear her appeal. Sall has since said she is leaving Australia.

In New South Wales, Kirralie Smith of Binary Australia lost an appeal after a court found she had unlawfully vilified two transgender players while raising her concerns about men identifying as women playing in a women's soccer competition. The court upheld the decision, leaving in place orders requiring her to pay $95,000 and publish court-ordered notices publicly acknowledging the finding against her. Kirralie has since received death threats, and Sall was forced to pull out of a Sydney rally in August for her own safety.

Sall, Kirralie, and other fearless women are the canaries in the coal mine. Their cases raise a profound question: can the law compel you to affirm what you know to be false and punish you if you refuse?

According to lawyer John Steenhof, Australia's implied constitutional freedom of political communication “provided Smith no protection” and appears increasingly to “protect progressive activists, not conservatives.”

I would go further and say that the special protections that women need from some men can now be effectively bypassed with little more than an administrative change to a birth certificate.

That is, in part, why I was so adamant about moving my amendments to the Surrogacy Bill to prevent the erasure of women and mothers in the law.

Last year the WA State Government introduced the Assisted Reproductive Technology and Surrogacy Bill to replace the earlier Surrogacy Act and, in doing so, removed all references to "mother", "birth mother", and "woman", replacing them instead with terms such as “persons” and "persons who give birth".

During the debate, I moved several amendments to restore this language. I did so because it reflects biological reality and because many women told me they were deeply troubled by terminology that appeared to erase motherhood from the law. In my view, there was no need for such a change, and every reason to preserve language that recognises women and mothers. Only a woman can carry and give birth to a child, and our laws should be able to say so.

I called a division in Parliament so every member's vote was on the record. The government and several other parties voted it down.

So, what does this have to do with Sall Grover and Kirralie Smith?

The denial of biology, reality and facts that humanity has regarded as self-evident for generations did not emerge from nowhere, nor is it happening in isolation. Language shapes thought. Words shape understanding. Those in power know this, which is why control of language has become so important.

The Western Australian ART and Surrogacy laws are part of a broader trend that includes the Albanese government's recent attempts to introduce "misinformation" laws. This federal Bill would have given a regulator sweeping powers to determine what constitutes misinformation online. The word "woman" is only one example. Terms such as "breastfeeding", and even basic biological facts, are increasingly treated as matters of ideology rather than objective reality.

The “misinformation” Bill was shelved in 2024 when it was unable to pass in the Senate, but the instinct behind it hasn't gone away - and even as I write this article attempts to rewrite the laws are in play: someone in authority decides what is true, and the rest of us are expected to fall into line.

George Orwell saw where that ends. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Party's final victory over Winston Smith isn't getting him to say two plus two makes five. It's getting him to believe it. Sall's warning is the same one, 77 years on.

What have you been made to say or believe that you know deep down not to be true?

Sall's case was decided under federal law. Kirralie's was decided under NSW law. They are exactly the kind of laws I will fight to keep out of Western Australia. I'll continue standing up in the Legislative Council for truth in our laws, and for your right to speak it without fear.

Please watch Sall's video and share it with someone who needs to hear it.