How to Submit Against the Definitions of Woman and Man Amendment Bill (by 2 July)
Submissions on the Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill close at 11:59 pm NZST on Thursday, 2 July 2026.
If you've been meaning to have your say, this is the week to do it. Below, we walk through exactly how to make a submission, what to say, and we've put together a free downloadable template for subscribers to help you get started — plus everything you need to know about what this Bill actually does and why we’re opposing it.
Jump straight to: How to make your submission→
What's Happened Since We Last Covered This
When NZ First first floated this Bill back in 2025, it was a Member's Bill sitting in the parliamentary ballot with no guaranteed path forward. That's changed. The Bill — now formally called the Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill — passed its first reading on 19 May 2026 and has been referred to the Social Services and Community Committee. Submissions are open now, and the Committee is due to report back to the House by 19 November 2026.
It would amend the Legislation Act 2019 to define:
Woman = "an adult human biological female"
Man = "an adult human biological male"
These definitions would apply by default wherever those words appear across New Zealand law, unless a specific Act says otherwise.
Here's the part that matters most for this submission round: on 19 May 2026, the Attorney-General, Hon Chris Bishop, tabled an official report under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. His conclusion was blunt. The Bill, as written, is inconsistent with the right to be free from discrimination, and that inconsistency cannot be justified. This isn't an advocacy group's opinion; it's the Crown's own chief law officer, on the public record, before a single submission has even been heard.
We'll get into exactly why below. But first, since submissions close soon, here's how to actually make yours.
How to Make a Submission
You don't need to be a lawyer, an expert, or even especially confident in your writing to make an effective submission. Select committees consistently say the most powerful submissions come from people explaining, in their own words, how a Bill affects them or their community.
1. Decide your position
You can support, oppose, or partially oppose the Bill. This guide is written from an opposing position.
2. Write in your own words
This is the single most important piece of advice in this entire guide. If the Select Committee receives a large number of submissions with identical or near-identical wording, it can group them and treat them as a single submission. A template that gets copy-pasted by hundreds of people will count for far less than a hundred people each writing two original paragraphs.
Use our downloadable template below as a starting structure, not a script. Read it, understand the arguments, then adapt your own version in your own voice.
3. Structure your submission
A clear submission generally has:
Who you are — your name (or your organisation's name), and anything about your background relevant to the Bill. This is optional but strengthens your standing.
Your position — a short, direct statement of whether you support or oppose the Bill, and why.
The body — your reasons, organised under headings. You can structure this around your own reasons or around specific clauses of the Bill you take issue with.
Recommendations — a short, bullet-pointed list of what you want the Committee to do.
A conclusion — restate your position in a sentence or two.
4. Decide whether to make an oral submission
The webform will ask if you want to speak to your submission via Zoom or in person. Oral submissions reinforce your written points and let the Committee ask questions directly. You can always decline later if you change your mind, even if you say yes now.
5. Keep personal details separate
Parliament publishes all submissions on its website. Do not put your contact details (email, phone, home address) in the body of your submission. The webform collects these separately, and only your name (or your organisation's name) is published.
6. Submit before the deadline
Head to Parliament's submission page for this Bill and follow the prompts. You can paste your submission directly into the form or upload it as a document.
Submissions close at 11:59 pm NZST on Thursday, 2 July 2026.
Get our free submission template. We've put together a downloadable template available in Word and PDF with a clear structure, some pre-filled legal arguments you're welcome to draw on, and space for you to write your own reasons and experience. Subscribe to get the template sent straight to your inbox.
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What the Bill Actually Does
The Bill would insert new sections 13A and 13B into the Legislation Act 2019, defining "woman," "man," "male," and "female" in strictly biological terms, regardless of gender identity. According to its own explanatory note, the purpose is to "uphold legal certainty, protect the integrity of sex-based rights, and ensure that language in law reflects biological reality." NZ First leader Winston Peters has framed it as protecting access to women's sport and changing rooms.
In practice, this is a Member's Bill from NZ First, introduced by MP Jenny Marcroft. It is not government policy. National's senior MPs, including Chris Bishop, a backbencher before his current role, have previously called similar debates "a distraction" from the cost of living, health, and infrastructure. Labour, the Greens, and Te Pāti Māori oppose it outright.
Why We Oppose It
We are Enby Meaning Media, created by and for the gender-diverse community. If that is not obvious enough of why we oppose any legislation that imposes itself onto the lives of transgender and gender diverse communities, we have also outlined a few specifics of not just why this Bill should be opposed morally, but how it is directly harmful and poorly developed legislation.
The Crown's own law officer says it's discriminatory.
The Attorney-General's report is the single strongest piece of evidence against this Bill, and it's worth understanding exactly what it says. Because the Bill defines "woman" and "man" as adults, and the Age of Majority Act 1970 sets "adult" at 20 in the absence of another definition, the Bill would — read literally — exclude everyone under 20 from the legal meaning of "woman" and "man" wherever those words appear in NZ law. The Attorney-General found this would create real, serious consequences: women under 20 losing the ability to apply for a declaration of paternity, losing access to the infanticide defence in the Crimes Act, and partners of women under 20 being unable to access parental leave.
He called this effect "inadvertent and arbitrary" and concluded the discrimination "cannot be justified." That's about as clear a red flag as a piece of legislation can get from the country's top law officer.
It doesn't fix the problem it claims to fix.
Some supporters of the Bill have suggested simply removing the word "adult" from the definitions to solve the age-discrimination problem. This doesn't work — it just creates a different absurdity. Strip "adult" out, and "woman" and "man" would, on their face, include female and male children, wherever those words appear in legislation clearly meant for adults. The Bill isn't one fix away from working. Its entire premise — that a single biological test can replace every contextual use of "woman" and "man" across all of NZ law — is what breaks.
It conflicts with the law that Parliament only just passed.
In 2021, Parliament passed a reform allowing people to change the sex on their birth certificate through self-declaration. This Bill doesn't repeal that — but it creates a live contradiction. A trans woman with a legally issued birth certificate recording her as female could still be treated as falling outside the legal definition of "woman" elsewhere, because that definition is now anchored to an undefined concept of "biological" sex.
It doesn't actually protect what it claims to protect.
If the goal is to safeguard access to women's sports, changing rooms, and similar spaces, that legal mechanism already exists. The Human Rights Act 1993 already permits single-sex spaces and services in defined circumstances — and the Attorney-General's report confirms this Bill doesn't touch that framework at all. What it does instead is bolt on a separate, conflicting, undefined definition elsewhere in the statute book, achieving none of its stated purpose while still causing harm.
It says nothing about intersex New Zealanders.
The Bill, its explanatory note, and its sponsor's public comments don't mention intersex people once. Because "biological" sex is never defined, it's entirely unclear how these provisions would apply to New Zealanders born with innate variations of sex characteristics — a population the Bill will plainly affect while pretending it doesn't exist.
It breaches Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
Before colonisation, Māori already recognised diversity in gender and sexuality — takatāpui and whakawahine are not modern imports; they're part of te ao Māori and rightly understood as taonga. A Bill that hard-codes a single, rigid, biology-only binary into the interpretive backbone of NZ statute law imposes a colonial framework on an area of tikanga Māori that already understands more richly. That's a real question of consistency with the Crown's Te Tiriti obligations to protect mātauranga and tikanga Māori actively — and we'd encourage the Select Committee to hear directly from takatāpui Māori on this point.
The debate itself is already a harm.
Here's something that doesn't fit neatly into a legal argument, but matters enormously: whether this Bill passes or fails, the act of holding this debate has already exacted a cost. For months, the question of whether transgender, non-binary, and intersex New Zealanders are who they say they are has been argued in Parliament, covered nationally, and discussed in homes around the country. That's not a neutral process for the people it's about — it's the public re-litigation of our right to exist, conducted largely by people who face no personal consequence either way.
We don't need universal understanding or acceptance. What every person in this country is entitled to is the unchallenged right to exist freely, openly, and without discrimination. That's a human right. It should never be a subject for parliamentary debate.
Who Opposes It
Outside NZ First's orbit, opposition is broad: Labour, the Greens, and Te Pāti Māori have all spoken against the Bill. Women's Refuge, the YWCA, and the National Council of Women have reaffirmed that trans women's access to services poses no threat to cis women. Health professionals, including the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, have warned of harmful mental-health and discriminatory fallout. The New Zealand Law Commission's 2025 Ia Tangata report — the most comprehensive recent evidence base on this subject — found transgender, non-binary, and intersex people already face significant discrimination, and recommended strengthening, not narrowing, their protections under the Human Rights Act.
How Else to Get Involved
Make a submission (see above) — this is the single highest-impact action available right now, and it closes soon.
Contact your MP, especially if you're in a National or ACT electorate, since their votes will determine whether this Bill ever proceeds beyond the Select Committee.
Support trans-led organisations doing this work daily: Gender Minorities Aotearoa, RainbowYOUTH, InsideOUT Kōaro, and Qtopia.
Talk about it with the people around you. Visibility and ordinary, everyday conversation do more to shift a debate like this than any single submission can alone.
Holding the Line for Aotearoa
The Gender Definition Bill isn’t really about definitions. It’s about control. The Bill aims to control our bodies, identities, and the right to exist without apology.
Across history, reactionaries have tried to disguise fear as “common sense.” This Bill follows that same tired tradition: a state deciding whose lives are legible. But Aotearoa has seen this pattern before, and we’ve always chosen the better path. We decriminalised queerness. We embraced marriage equality. We banned conversion therapy. Every time, love out-organises hate.
Right now, that legacy is being tested again.
This is our line in the sand for trans kids growing up in small towns, for takatāpui elders who fought this battle already, for every person who’s been told they don’t fit. We can’t let imported hysteria rewrite who we are. Not now, not here.
Stand firm in manaakitanga, in empathy, in truth that recognises everybody and every identity.
Kia kaha, Aotearoa. Submissions close 2 July — we hope you'll make yours count.
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