In 2013, one of the final acts of the Gillard Government was to amend the Sex Discrimination Act to add sexuality, gender identity and intersex variations as protected categories. This was not the first time that the Commonwealth had considered anti-discrimination legislation protecting LGBTI people. The most prominent example was the Australian Democrats-sponsored Sexuality Discrimination Bill, introduced to Parliament in November 1995, which included provisions to protect transgender people as well as gays, lesbians and bisexuals. The Senate referred the proposed bill to an inquiry by the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee, which received 448 submissions from various sectors of Australian society. Approximately 300 of these submissions specifically addressed transgender discrimination, some advocating for the rights of transgender Australians, and others focusing their attacks against the bill based on the transgender provisions. This paper examines the transgender-related submissions to the inquiry, as well as the debates in parliament, to understand the ways that the public and politicians were framing transgender rights in the mid-1990s. These debates are telling in how transgender issues and anxieties over gender fluidity have consistently become an easy target in wider debates about equality for sexual and gender minorities.