Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is the third time that I've raised this issue in this parliament, about having a Senate inquiry into gender dysphoria, and I've stated my reasons why.

In Senator Birmingham's speech, the main fact was that they're relying on a letter that Mr Greg Hunt, the former health minister, received from the Royal Australian College of Physicians. In 2019, the National Association of Practising Psychiatrists wrote to Mr Hunt requesting an inquiry into this issue. In March 2020, apparently the Royal Australian College of Physicians wrote to Mr Hunt rejecting the need for a national review into gender-affirming medicine and said that to withhold care from children and adolescents would be unethical. That was actually the comment that Senator Birmingham referred to in his speech, and that was his reason for blocking this whole inquiry.

We're talking about more than three years ago. Since then, we have actually had further information. I have here and article from the Australian titled 'Endocrinologists' challenge to the medical transition of gender-questioning children silenced by medical college.' This was by Natasha Robinson, the health editor, and it came out in July 2023. It's just very recent:

The medical affairs committee of the nation's peak endocrinology society opposed the prescription of hormones to children and expressed deep reservations over the lack of evidence underpinning transgender affirmative medicine standards of care adopted by children's hospitals in explosive advice to a peak medical college.

The Medical Affairs Committee of the Endocrine Society of Australia—a subspeciality college of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians—did not support the endorsement of gender-affirmative standards of care developed by influential doctors at the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne, pointing to concerns about the lack of evidence behind practices including placing children on puberty blockers at a very young age.

The views of the ESA's medical affairs committee are contained in a letter to the RACP, which in late 2019 was consulting the profession at the request of then health minister Greg Hunt who had requested advice on the treatment of gender dysphoria in children and adolescents.

The ESA's letter reporting the position of its medical affairs committee advised that, after examining RCH policy documents, the specialist endocrinologists who made up the committee did not support giving puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to children and raised concerns that the effects of puberty blockers were not reversible.

Here we have, from Telfer and Tollit in the MJA:

Oestrogen and testosterone are used to either feminise or masculinise a person's appearance by inducing the onset of secondary sexual characteristics of the desired gender. Some of the effects of these medications are irreversible…

There's evidence here, as people are saying. This is Coleman, Radix and W P Bouman, 'Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People'. They say, 'Other changes will be permanent such as "male-pattern" baldness, genital growth, and facial hair growth in nonbinary people…' Then you have other things that will happen. People on these cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers can have reduced bone density, impaired fertility, and impaired sexual function and libido. It goes on to say that it also indicates 'potential negative impacts on brain development and possibly increased risk of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, obesity, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes'.

The fact is there is evidence coming out now that this is not good for children. We must have this inquiry. It's not legislation I'm putting up here. I'm asking for an inquiry because parents want answers. These parents are crying out because they've seen what their children are going through, and you're blocking it here. People have a right to have a say. It turns my stomach when I see that you're fighting for an Indigenous Voice to this parliament. You want them to be heard but you are shutting out the parents in this nation from having a say. Senator McKim, I'm happy for him and Jasper. He's had what he wants to have done—that's great. But the fact is you have to look at the other parents out there who have knocked on our doors to say, 'We have to have an in inquiry because this is the damage it's done to my children.' Are we just blocking them out because it worked for someone else? But it doesn't work for everyone. There is not enough evidence to say that their mental stability is really investigated before they are given this.

I have letters here from the mothers. Naomi says, 'My adult son is a very unwell young man. He has suffered with functional neurological disorder, depression and anxiety, and has been under the care of the psychiatrist since 2015. He has dissociative episodes, full-body seizures, limb weakness and fatigue.' Last year, he went to a GP, Dr Rhys Young, who, after an hour consultation and without any reference to psychiatrist records, prescribed her son with gender-altering medication under the informed consent model. Her son now has shrunken testicles, has breasts and has lost any possibility of ever fathering children. The mother says everyone, including medical specialists, seem to be scared to speak out for fear of being labelled 'transphobic'. She says, 'I'm just a mum fighting to keep my son alive.' That's a problem—if people disagree with you, you have to name call all the time. You use the word 'transphobic'; it has nothing to do with it. I won't be shut down and neither will the mothers because I will keep raising this until we get common sense in this place.

There is another one here. Jude's daughter, aged 17 at the time, came out as transgender in October 2018 after three years of poor mental health, including diagnoses of anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder. This was completely out of the blue. She had never shown any masculine tendencies in her life. The week she declared she was transgender she claimed she was suicidal and ended up in the adolescent mental health ward of the local hospital, John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle, New South Wales. Hospital staff immediately affirmed her transgender identity upon her admission without question. The hospital staff then said they were referring her to the hospital paediatric endocrinologist, Dr Prudence Lopez, for testosterone. She was 17. Jude says, 'We told them we didn't agree to the referral and that we were going back to a private practitioner and psychiatrist.' Her daughter spent five nights in hospital and was then discharged. Her daughter then turned 18 a month after the hospital admission, and the endocrinologist put her on testosterone at the second appointment in March 2019. She has pretty much spent two years in bed, dropped out of her school, does not work and does not study. In October 2020, we found that she was seeing a plastic surgeon in Newcastle to have her breasts cut off. She has since been diagnosed with complete PTSD from childhood bullying, autism spectrum disorder as well as ADHD.

There are more stories here I can tell you about, and it's constant all the time. But all you're worried about and all I'm hearing here is that Senator Birmingham said, 'Well, we don't want to upset these people by having an inquiry, and we don't want the media in here listening to these stories and what people might say.' Then I moved the amendment, which was supported by this chamber, so that it can be in camera. So we don't have to upset these people, it can be in camera—the privacy of the lot. So why don't we give the people of this nation an opportunity? I know the Libs have got a conscience vote, but Labor no. I'll appeal to those people on the other side: we are actually talking about the children of this nation and about parents that just want a voice to be heard to tell you their stories of what is happening so common sense can prevail.

This all started in 2013, when changes were passed to the Sex Discrimination Act. Under that act, you can't discriminate against anyone based on their gender or anything like that. That's where this is all coming from. Everyone is frightened—doctors, psychiatrists and everyone—of discrimination. You shut down doctors like Jillian Spencer, who actually was under threat of losing her job because she knows the problems here. She's been shut down from having a say.

Do you reckon we're doing the right thing by our people, by the children? A lot of these children, if you look at it, have autism and are being bullied in school, and a lot of these kids are lost because they don't have their parents at home to guide them as well. These kids are actually suicidal, or they want attention from their peers, and this is being put in their heads by idiots out there that are saying, 'You've got a problem.' These kids may have a problem that they really don't understand. Maybe they are attracted to their own sex, but the fact is that isn't to say that we need to allow them to mutilate their bodies at such a young age. If they are inclined to be gay, let them grow till 18, until they find out, go through puberty and understand who they are as a person, without allowing them—just because they're screaming out for attention from their parents, from their teachers, from their peers, from whoever—to get onto these sex hormones and these other changes that will ruin them for the rest of their lives. There are kids that are left in beds, dormant—absolutely destroyed. These puberty blockers can never change. These sex hormone treatments can never change, and then they regret.

I have mothers in my office crying, absolutely at a loss, because they've lost their children. When they've gone to seek that medical care and attention, they've lost their rights, because as soon as the child says they're suicidal, they're taken out of the care of their parents, and they will actually start being given these bloody drugs. They don't even take a mental assessment of them—the children are not assessed. They don't understand the background as parents do. But you're shutting the door on these parents having their say. They deserve more than that.

I'm pleading with this chamber: please, just think what you are going to do. These people need help. They need us to just hear what they have to say. What are you so afraid of? Why aren't you prepared to listen to what evidence may be put before us? Why aren't you prepared to listen to it? Why are you just shutting it out? What is your problem? Is it because you might be called transphobic? Is that really the bottom line? Because that's all I can see. Senator Birmingham, I put to you: it is going to be in camera. You have no reason to deny there being a hearing into this, no reason whatsoever, so I'm asking you on behalf of the parents and the children of this nation: allow this inquiry to go ahead. I'm appealing to the Labor Party as well. Give these kids a chance. Let them be heard, let their parents be heard, then make your minds up and make a decision. That's our job.

This is the third time, and I'll tell you something: if you want to vote this down, I will not let it go. I will keep going and going and going. As more evidence comes out that you've turned a blind eye to it and as more evidence comes out that proves that these puberty blockers and sex hormones are actually changing and destroying these children, I will not let it go. I will keep fighting for them.

Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion moved by the leader of Pauline Hanson's One Nation, Senator Hanson, be agreed to. A division having been called, I remind honourable senators that, because it is past 6.30 pm, there will be no division this evening. The matter will be put as a deferred vote tomorrow. The debate is adjourned accordingly.