A woman who identifies as male has won a landmark case in NSW. She has been awarded $35,000 after the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) found NSW Health unlawfully “deadnamed” her.

NSW Health followed a procedure most employees undertake, asking for prior legal names to check criminal records, etc. This woman is working with children after all. But in this case it has been ruled as illegal because it has hurt the woman’s feelings. The legal protections for children have been sacrificed for the sake of her feelings.

Once upon a time in Australia facts, evidence and reality ruled supreme, but not anymore. The feelings of trans identified individuals trumps all.

And watch out if you fall foul of this new religion because you will be harshly penalised.

The NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal found that the department’s standard recruitment practice of checking an ­applicant’s identity exposed the social worker, who was “assigned a female sex at birth”, to the risk of being “outed” to co-workers.

The employee, who was given typically female first names when born, lived as a woman until 2012 when he began transitioning to live as a man, the NCAT found.

The worker, anonymised in the case as HGY, had worked at the Northern NSW Local Health District since 2020 and applied for a new role, as a specialist child support program co-ordinator, in 2023. After his application was successful, HGY received an unexpected phone call from a support officer seeking to confirm female birth names he used prior to transitioning.

HGY claimed he “has experienced ongoing anxiety and distress that has continued to escalate seriously”.

“He has endured panic ­attacks, rapid breathing, and from time to time can only manage two to four hours of sleep when he is required to engage with the (health district) about the matter. He describes feeling sick to his stomach when considering that he could be outed, a fact that he is reminded of daily.”

HGY “says he feels angry, frustrated, and sad by the fact that in order to take another job in the NSW Health Service, he would be required to compromise his dignity and his privacy”.

Law and health ought to be firmly grounded in reality. But NCAT says otherwise.

This female claims to be male so every person and institution in NSW is being forced to go along with the lie or face severe penalties.

This woman is working with children but wants them to believe she is a man. She wants to be excluded from background checks even though every other person who works with children has to undergo them.

The laws in this case defy reality.

Adults can identify however they like but when an entire state is compelled to comply with the lie it has gone too far. Especially when the health and safety of children is at stake.