This is how you save women's sport in Australia, instead of floating another anti-trans bill in a matter of months under the guise of protecting women.

Because it deserves more than the $17 million set aside in the 2021-22 budget for two World Cup events or the additional $3.4 million for female leaders in sport.

Join Canberra United, the only A-Leagues' club dedicated solely for women, get to the National Convention Centre to watch the Canberra Capitals, flick on the TV and watch the Super Netball, follow the NRLW on social media, get yourself to an AFLW match or tune into the WBBL.

But whilst the Save Women's Sport Bill screams: "won't someone think of the poor women". It's really about anti-trans sentiment.

The Scott Morrison-backed bill proposes to exclude trans women from single sex sport and is the latest attack on transgender rights. The timing stinks. It is presumably to gain the votes of transphobes discouraged by the nullifying of the government's Religious Discrimination Bill, as they introduced it the very same day - February 10.

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The reality is a bill won't change much for transgender athletes. Canberra's Hannah Mouncey has been subjected to years of discrimination by the AFL.

She was told she wasn't allowed to play in the AFLW about five years ago, despite International Olympic Committee guidelines allowing her to compete at the pinnacle of women's sport - an Olympic Games.

The fear cisgender men are going to go through the process of transitioning to exploit women's sport has no truth and has been disproven, with the first published case dating back to US tennis player Renee Richards in 1977 and most recently Kiwi weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, who failed to register a single lift during Tokyo.

It has been thrust into the spotlight recently again as University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas will likely not be able to compete at the NCAA championship due to a new USA Swimming policy. As she has been on testosterone suppression for 32 months which falls outside the new policy requiring 36 months.

A focus on biological sex versus gender is what has conservatives and the federal Liberal Party's knickers in a twist, it seems. Unable to grasp trans women are women, and they therefore belong in women's sport if they choose.

The main argument of the bill focuses on 'saving' women from discrimination due to the "numerous physical advantages" men have over women.

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A 2017 paper published in the Journal of the Philosophy of Sport argued genetic advantages frequently occur in sports and if we take into consideration genetic advantages of trans athletes, these also should apply to cisgender athletes by introducing a handicap system based on testosterone levels.

In effect this is already in place, with many sporting organisations basing participation off testosterone levels and forcing cisgender women to lower their levels to compete, such as Namibian cisgender athletes Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi.

The focus of the government's bill plays into that very damaging stereotype, and tries to paint cisgender women against transgender women. With the underlying notion cis women need to be saved, the answer is from who though? Women have never been scared of other women, with one in three women experiencing physical and/or sexual violence at the hands of a man they know, our problems lie with men off the sports field.

The domestic violence and sexual assault arena does not seem as attractive to the government, who are aiming to secure enough conservative votes for the federal election.

As an Equality Tasmania spokesperson, from the state of which the senator proposing the bill represents, said: "In Tasmania, transgender women have been playing women's sport and accessing women's service for many years without any of the problems predicted by Senator [Claire] Chandler," Dr Charlie Burton said.

"We reject attempts to sow fear and division about policies that have worked well and have made Tasmania a better place for everyone."

Also right now we have a spectrum of genders - ranging from cis, trans, non-binary and more - so the question we should be asking ourselves is actually how we make inclusive spaces for everyone on that gender spectrum. Not how do we exclude people for living their truth.

If not for the human rights of it all, the Liberal Party surely responds to money, and excluding trans athletes from sport at any level has economic impacts. Initial findings from a report last week by the government's Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, into the economics of sport, found health spending could be as much as half a billion dollars higher if Australians were less physically active.

Half a billion dollars at play, in this economy? The government should instead be funding inclusive sporting environments for trans athletes and other LGBTQIA+ athletes to lower our health bill, not pushing discrimination for votes.