It’s shocking — and deeply disappointing — that in her video call for tougher sentencing, Sussan Ley completely ignored perhaps the most disturbing fact of this sordid Hilary Maloney case: the offender was a biological man who, after abusing his own daughter, was placed in a women’s prison under a declared female identity.

In her social media video, Ley asked:

“What is a fair jail sentence for a person who abused their five-year-old daughter 19 times and filmed it 10 years? … In Victoria, they got just four years and nine months and will be eligible for parole after two and a half years for the Commonwealth offences. Only six months. That is not justice.”

Stop right there. Ley is of course right to call for tougher sentencing for such a crime.

But why does she use the preferred pronouns of a convicted male sex offender?

She presents “the offender” as a neutral genderless figure. Why did she omit that this was a man who got a lenient sentence because he identified as a woman?

Why did she gloss over that his “rehousing” in a women’s prison was central to the outrage — and central to the alleged perversion of justice here?

To Families, to Victorians, and to women everywhere: this is the point.

The offender, known publicly by the pseudonym Hilary Maloney, was born male. He brutalised his daughter — filming, producing, distributing material.

Yet because he self-declared a female identity, he was treated like a woman by the courts and prison system — and awarded a far softer sentence, partly because the court took into account “reduced moral culpability” associated with his gender transition.

Ley’s decision to use his preferred pronouns isn’t merely political correctness gone mad — it is an insult to every woman who has ever suffered real inequality, real danger, real violation.

If Sussan Ley ever hopes to lead our nation, she must do more than nod toward “tougher sentences.” She must understand the difference between a man and a woman —  and refuse to give male sex offenders a leave pass under the guise of LGBTIQA+ gender fluid identity.

Women’s rights and girls’ safety are endangered by ideological capitulation to a male’s preferred pronouns. If Ms Ley can’t see biological reality — or won’t defend it — she is failing the very people she says she hopes to protect.

In the battle to restore girls’ and women’s rights, language matters.