An American Moment in an Australian Campaign
nytimes.comThe Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. Sign up to get it by email. Perhaps the ugliest part of Australia’s election campaign has been the debate around the rights of transgender people.
Katherine Deves, Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s handpicked candidate for the seat of Warringah, courted controversy this week when she walked back a previous apology for calling transition surgery “mutilation.” Mr.
Morrison has resisted calls — including from within his own Liberal Party — to drop Ms. Deves since tweets that had been deleted from her account resurfaced, including the original comment about transition surgery.
In another tweet, she compared her campaign to ban trans women from women’s sports to standing up against the Holocaust. Mr.
