Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

As the Minister representing the Minister for Health and Aged Care, if there is further information I can provide after question time, I will do so. I would say that the Royal Children's Hospital has an excellent reputation in paediatric care in Australia. It is staffed by world-renowned medical professionals providing first-rate care to younger citizens in the state and also around the country. I don't have close knowledge of the services they would provide to children with gender dysphoria, but I have no doubt that they have the professional standards and the professional skills that are required to provide those young people and their families with first-level advice and health care.

We have no information available to the government, to my knowledge, that we should see it any differently to that—that is, that where there are children who require health services they access them through a children's hospital; that those services are accredited, there are professional standards in place and there are appropriate ethics and various advisory bodies that inform the delivery of those services; and that if there are concerns around them they are dealt with through the appropriate channels—not necessarily by politicians, who have particular views about certain things, but actually through the delivery of health services—as we do in a whole range of other areas of paediatric care.