Rainbow Wellington is incredibly disappointed that Sports Minister Mark Mitchell has ordered Sport New Zealand Ihi Aotearoa to remove the Guiding Principles for the Inclusion of Transgender People in Community Sport document from their website.
These Principles, along with a learning resource developed with InsideOUT Kōaro were a helpful resource, assisting a number of community sport organisations navigate the process of creating safe and inclusive sporting spaces for everyone.
The Minister’s letter to Sport NZ says they should “no longer have guiding principles published and should leave that decision-making and judgment up to individual sports and community organisations”.
However, the Principles document itself states “This document provides guiding principles rather than rules or criteria because it is not possible to provide a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach across every code. Different codes will require or want to take different approaches.”
Anecdotes about concerns are always at the high performance level, not the community sport level that this resource was aimed at.
Participation in sports and physical activities is important to promote positive physical and mental health for everyone. Trans and non-binary people participate in organised sport at almost half the rate of the general population.1
This directive is therefore a depressing example of the Minister giving in to a political ultimatum from a minor party, rather than do what is best for health and inclusion outcomes in Aotearoa.
Rainbow Wellington works alongside several Wellington sports organisations and these Principles have been used to help develop community level policies.
If any sport or recreation organisation is interested in developing their own policies, we recommend they reach out to InsideOUT Kōaro for assistance.
Rainbow Wellington will continue to make the Guiding Principles document available on our website, at rainbowwellington.org.nz/campaigns/safer-sports/.
1 Veale, J, J Byrne, K Tan, S Guy, A Yee, T Nopera and R Bentham. Counting Ourselves: The health and wellbeing of trans and non-binary people in Aotearoa New Zealand. Transgender Health Research Lab, University of Waikato: Hamilton. 2019.