Call for Special General Meeting as Mardi Gras Rejects Centring Trans Rights

At the 25 November 2025 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras (SGLMG) annual general meeting, Pride in Protest moved three successful resolutions, including recommending that transgender rights be a central focus of the 2026 event. However, following a 50 day delay on confirming the status of these motions, the Mardi Gras Board has now determined to reject them.

The majority motions were all important, however it’s the rejection of prioritising transgender rights at this year’s event that’s particularly problematic due to recent attacks on trans rights, which have included Queensland’s denial of treatment for kids and a moral panic around trans inmates in the Northern Territory, while the US Trump administration spent 2025 revoking trans rights.

Mardi Gras cochairs Kathy Pavlich and Mits Delisle broke the news to the SGLMG membership via a 20 January 2026 email, in which they explained that the decision reflected the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission governance framework the organisation operates under, along with ensuring that “Mardi Gras’ values, strategic priorities, and long-term sustainability” are upheld.

“I moved the motions on trans rights and antidiscrimination reform, and they are the most popularly supported motions in AGM history,” Pride in Protest spokesperson Evan Gray made clear in a 21 January statement. 

“This is not only spitting in the face of trans people but the membership generally, by picking this horrendous fight in the lead up to the season.”

Gray further announced on Tuesday that Pride in Protest is calling for an extraordinary general meeting of the Mardi Gras board and membership to further debate the outcome of the motions, as the majority of members sought to progress them. And Gray added that as this great wave of conservatism washes over, people “need to be standing with the most marginalised, not the least”.

When trans rights are under attack

“In a time where trans rights are being rolled back in this country, Mardi Gras is choosing to deliberately defy their membership and the motions they passed when in the past they have partially followed through with them,” said Pride in Protest member and former SGLMG board member Charlie Murphy. “This is a deliberate choice to abandon the trans community politically.”

“I was one of the very few trans people on board within the last 10 years, and most of the trans people on board have faced disciplinary action for their involvement in political action while on board,” she continued. “I was stood down on the basis of joining a queer rights protest in 2021.”

The first, and most supported, AGM motion ever sought to make trans rights a central focus for the 2026 festival and to condemn the Trump administration. The second was for the board to query MPs on their support for an overhaul of antidiscrimination law and if that support is not there then not welcome them to the event, whilst the third involved Mardi Gras becoming publicly funded.

The SGLMG board cochairs suggested in their Tuesday email that progressing the three resolutions was not in keeping with its “legal and fiduciary duties”, and nor its “legal, financial, operational, reputational and safety considerations”.

Evans summed up the gist of the email as the board “not supporting trans rights” and that doing so would be against SGLMG “goals and objectives”.

“To me, this seems like transphobic politicians are now explicitly being protected,” Charlie underscored. “Albanese has stated publicly that he does not think I and all other trans women are real women. He is not acting on antidiscrimination reform for us.”

“So, why are Mardi Gras picking a fight with the trans community instead of him?”

A Labor coup

Pride in Protest lead candidate Luna Choo took the most votes at last November’s Mardi Gras Board election. This was in keeping with PiP lead candidate Damien Nguyen having done the same the year prior. 

But when Pride in Protest established itself in the lead up to the 2018 AGM, the group was an outsider seeking to bring back the radical roots of the Mardi Gras as per the first march in 1978.

The first Mardi Gras took place on Gadigal land in Sydney in 1978. It was an unauthorised street march made up of LGBTIQA+ people, who were calling for an end to the criminalisation of their diverse sexualities. 

For this defiant move, the NSW police kettled the group in and attacked them. Dozens of participants were arrested. The Herald then outed these people in the press.

Pride in Protest was founded on the understanding that the corporatised Mardi Gras event of the present has lost its way. The left-leaning trans rights group called out corporate sponsors engaged in human rights abuses, along with calling for the end of conservative politicians participating, whilst most prominently, PiP has been loudly demanding for ‘cops out of Mardi Gras’.

So, it is in the wake of the strides that Pride in Protest has been making that the group Protect Mardi Gras appeared on the Mardi Gras Board election ticket in 2025. The threat to the event, according to this conservative group, is activists who want to ban police, politicians and sponsors from Mardi Gras. What is at stake, according to Protect, is the “powerful message of unity” that is Mardi Gras.

This conservative pushback is understood to have the backing of both the Labor Party and the Liberals.

“Spitting in the face of trans people”

“The motions that passed at the AGM were both basic and follow a well set precedent of a similar motion passed at the 2023 AGM, where members directed the board to write to state MPs in support of Alex Greenwich’s Equality Bill,” Pride in Protest members and past SGLMG board member Luc Velez explained.

“As a director, I helped draft the letter the organisation eventually sent, which in no uncertain terms informed them that elected representatives who did not support our community in parliament should not feel welcome at our events,” he added.

The SGLMG email also suggests that over the 50-odd day interim between the membership voting in favour of the three motions, board members had been subjected to “personal and harmful commentary online, as well as a coordinated email campaign seeking to influence governance and decision-making”, that amounted to targeting, intimidation or attempting to pressure staff is not on.

As he was captured on footage speaking in Newtown’s Pride Square on Tuesday, Evans implied that accusing the trans community of being intimidatory via its use of emails in relation to the motions was a bit of a stretch, and in calling for a special general meeting, they confirmed that the membership could “force the board to a resolution” and perhaps even “spill them if needed”.

As Velez put it in ending, “the current board is either ignorant of the organisation’s recent history of advocacy or is deliberately misrepresenting member democracy as a ‘governance risk’ in service of Labor politicians, like Albanese and Minns, who have shown no interest in standing up for our community.”