The Northern Territory has banned trans women from being incarcerated in female prisons, following complaints of 'deeply troubling cases'.
Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro made the announcement on Monday, becoming the first Australian government leader to introduce such a ban.
'There should be no men in women's prisons, full stop,' she told The Australian.
'I can tell you now, here in the Northern Territory there are no blokes in women's jails and we're not having that here, not on my watch. We've got really clear guidelines around this.
'Labor had a weaker process but we want to make it really clear that if you are a man and you're fundamentally equipped as a man, if I could put it that way, then you belong in a men's prison.'
Finocchiaro claimed the move was to protect women's dignity, conflating the issue with the epidemic of domestic violence across Australia.
'If you're born a bloke, you go into a men's prison. At the end of the day, this is really about women's safety,' she said.
'And when you overlay that against the scourge of domestic violence in this country and the way in which women are so targeted and victimised, this is our nation's shame.'
Finocchiaro added she thought it was 'absurd to think that people would be putting men equipped with male genitalia in women's prisons'.
In most states and territories in Australia, corrections policies ensure inmates are housed in accordance with their gender identity.
But Finocchiaro's policy change has followed calls from Women's Forum of Australia, a think tank connected to religious groups and conservative politics.
Chief executive Rachael Wong published an open letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and all state and territory premiers and chief ministers on Monday, calling for action on housing trans women in female prisons.
'The incarceration of male offenders in women's prisons represents a national human rights crisis,' she said.
'It is a betrayal of the women Australia's leaders have pledged to protect. It is a breach of international human rights law. And it is a moral stain on our justice system.'
The letter referenced two high-profile cases regarding the presence of trans women in female prisons in Australia as evidence for the need for change.
A 29-year-old woman, referred to as Katie in media reports, was allegedly sexually assaulted by her trans cellmate Krista Richards at a South Australia prison.
In a separate case, Autumn Tulip Harper, a 26-year-old trans paedophile father, was allocated to a women's prison in Victoria after being convicted of abusing her five-year-old daughter.
Prompted by the two incidents, the forum demanded the immediate removal of trans women from female prisons across the country.
'If other states want to be confused by this, that's a matter for them to justify to their communities, but we won't be confused by this woke agenda that is being driven by Labor governments around the country,' Finocchiaro said.
'This is the consequence of ideologically driven law and policy at state and federal level.'
'Labor is obsessed with social engineering as a distraction from doing what this country actually needs.'