Family First spokesperson and Binary Australia board member Lyle Shelton has called for “Welcome Here” stickers, which encourage LGBTIQA+ people to engage with health services, police, and other organisations, to be removed from publicly funded spaces.
His comments follow complaints by Binary Australia CEO Kirralie Smith about one of the stickers being displayed on the front door of her local police station. Smith was visiting the station to report an alleged death threat. In an online post, Smith said the sticker made her question whether police would take her complaint seriously.
Smith is scheduled to speak at a rally in Sydney on Sunday calling for changes to the federal Sex Discrimination Act that would remove gender identity as a protected attribute. Sall Grover, the CEO of the now-defunct app Giggle for Girls, had also been scheduled to speak at the event. However, Grover has since withdrawn after reportedly receiving threats similar to those described by Smith.
Last month a Sydney court upheld a decision that Smith had had unlawfully vilified two transgender women and order that she and Binary Australia pay damages of $90,000. Grover was found to have discriminated against transgender woman Roxanne Tickle when she banned for from her social media app on the basis of her gender identity.
Speaking to The Australian Grover said she feared for her life, noting the assassination of US political figure Charlie Kirk as a concern.
“We have been inundated with abuse, and it has been escalating,” she said. “We are living in a post-Charlie Kirk world, and it makes me super nervous.” Grover said.
The ACON-backed Welcome Here project has been rolled out nationally and is used by more than 4,000 services and businesses. It evolved from the Safe Place project, which was established to address high levels of street-based violence against LGBTIQA+ people. The original project launched in 1998, while the current Welcome Here initiative was introduced in 2018.
Shelton said it was “outrageous” that Smith had to walk past what he described as “rainbow political posters” while reporting alleged death threats.
The former political lobbyist and aspiring politician said that, if elected at the next New South Wales state election, his party would seek to prohibit LGBTIQA+ symbols and rainbow-themed materials from public buildings.
In a statement, Shelton said:
“Rainbow political material in a police station says that Kirralie and Sall are already judged ‘bigots’ and ‘haters’ because they refuse to accept what the rainbow flag stands for.”
He also argued that government agencies should not promote what he described as a political ideology.
Shelton’s proposal comes after years of work by NSW Police to improve engagement with LGBTIQA+ communities.
In 2016, NSW Police formally apologised for their role in the 1978 Mardi Gras events. Subsequent inquiries identified shortcomings in investigations into the deaths of many gay men over several decades and found that, in some cases, police officers were likely involved in anti-gay violence.
Relations between police and LGBTIQA+ communities were further strained when former NSW Police officer Beau Lamarre-Condon was charged over the alleged murders of Sydney couple Jesse Baird and Luke Davies. The matter is scheduled to proceed to trial later this year.
ACON and NSW Police have been contacted for comment.
