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

I move:

That the following matter be referred to the Community Affairs References Committee for inquiry and report by 4 September 2023:

Treatment options for children and young people with gender dysphoria in Australia, with particular reference to:

(a) whether children are being rushed into gender reassignment treatment, as has been suggested by University of Queensland Law Professor Patrick Parkinson;

(b) whether psychiatrists, such as Dr Jillian Spencer, a senior staff specialist in the Queensland Children's Hospital's consultation liaison psychiatry team, who question the use of puberty blockers without an appropriate mental health assessment, are being silenced;

(c) whether children are being over-diagnosed with gender dysphoria without proper consultation or mental health assessment;

(d) whether Australia should follow the United Kingdom and many European countries in adopting a more cautious approach to the prescription of puberty blocking drugs, amid concerns the evidence base for their efficacy is lacking;

(e) whether the Commonwealth should take a greater oversight and regulatory role in the prescription of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to children, following the admission from the Federal Government that it has no idea how widely the drugs are being prescribed off-label for gender dysphoria; and

(f) any other related matters.

I hope that the Senate will listen to what I have to say, as well as all those who have contacted our offices to tell us of the growing concern they have.

A growing chorus of experts in Australia are speaking out against gender dysphoria treatment, at great risk to their jobs and reputation, and are revealing the harm it causes children. A growing number of Australian parents are feeling completely powerless against it. A growing chorus of experts overseas are warning of its consequences. Countries held up by the Australian Left as progressive, like Sweden and Finland, are restricting it. After a broad inquiry which found little evidence supporting it, the United Kingdom has virtually stopped it. The rapid increase in the number of Australian children being prescribed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to treat gender dysphoria deserves a comprehensive inquiry by this parliament. Last year, a freedom-of-information request revealed the alarming increase in this phenomenon. It revealed a 10-fold increase in the number of Australian children enrolled in public adolescent gender clinics from 2014 to 2021. It revealed more than a seven-fold increase in the number of adolescents receiving cross-sex hormone treatments over the same period. Of greatest concern, it revealed a more than 100-fold increase in the number of children being prescribed puberty blockers. These were just the public figures. The numbers are certainly much higher when children being treated by GPs in private clinics are included.

This controversy has been raised recently by Queensland paediatrician Dr Dylan Wilson, who has called for an immediate halt to those treatments being carried out by the Queensland Children's Gender Service. He has called for an immediate investigation into the process of diagnosis and treatment at the clinic. In a letter to the chief executive of Children's Health Queensland, Dr Wilson noted:

The evolution of the treatment of gender-questioning children and adolescents over the last three years has been exponential …

He said:

… despite these developments … it continues to operate in the same manner as it has always done with little or no regard for the evolution of information in the area of clinical practice.

He said that, in doing so, the service was 'conducting poor quality medicine lacking evidence base, that is causing harm to children'. Just sit back and absorb that for a moment. A leading paediatrician is saying these treatments are harming children. This man is not an idealist, a politician or a media commentator; he is an expert on children's health. He said:

There is no evidence of benefit for the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for gender-questioning children and there never has been …

The Queensland Children's Gender Service has almost 1,000 kids on its books and has the nation's highest rates of cross-sex hormone prescriptions. These are being given to children as young as 14, despite conclusive clinical evidence that they cause permanent long-term health impacts, such as osteoporosis, impaired fertility and sexual function, negative impacts on brain development and increased risks of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, obesity, high cholesterol and diabetes.

I also refer to an article published this month in the Australian by Professor Patrick Parkinson. Professor Parkinson is an emeritus professor of law at the University of Queensland and the former chair of the Family Law Council. He has called this rapid rise of so-called gender-affirming care 'a public health crisis caused not by a virus, not by a disease, but by a social contagion'. He noted that anyone who raises concern about this issue is shouted down and vilified. He's absolutely right because that's exactly what happened to me when I raised this matter in the Senate last year. He notes that it's true that a very small number of people genuinely suffer from gender dysphoria, which is resolved only with cross-sex hormones and risky surgery. He also noted that this fact has been seized upon and used to build an intricate web of lies and falsehoods, such as the disproved notion that 'there are not just two sexes, or that it is actually possible to change sex or be "non-binary"' and 'that every child has an innate gender identity that awaits discovery'. It is this web of lies that effectively forms the basis of the so-called gender affirmation approach that is followed by children's gender clinics across Australia. It's nonsense and it's not supported by the scientific or the clinical evidence.

Professor Parkinson also noted that politicians have embraced this new faith, without evidence. So have I: the usual suspects in Labor, the Greens and the coalition proved that last year in rejecting my motion for an inquiry—not all the coalition; there were some that have common sense and did support my motion. But it was all of Labor and the Greens and some of the crossbench as well, to name Senator David Pocock as one. Politicians in this country have actually passed laws supporting this new faith, effectively criminalising any other approach to supporting vulnerable children, and even preventing parents from trying to help their own children in other ways. As the professor pointed out, fashionable but unsupported ideas about gender don't really matter if they do no harm. But this is causing harm. Children are being harmed, and families are being torn apart.

Earlier this year I met some mothers who had gone through this with their children. It has been a wrenching, traumatic process for all of them. They've seen their children influenced by teachers, peers and social media into believing all their problems will be solved by switching genders. This gender affirmation ideology has all the hallmarks of a crazy cult: capturing impressionable minds, isolating them from their families and ultimately destroying their lives.

One mother's tale bears repeating. She took her young teenage daughter's gender-questioning very seriously and sought all the psychiatric and psychological help she could. These experts couldn't compete with the indoctrination this poor girl was getting in her classes, in the schoolyard and on the internet. The girl, aged only 14, decided she was a boy trapped in a girl's body and demanded gender-affirming treatment. Her mother did all the research she could, consulting the same experts she had asked to help her daughter. Life at home became unbearable, as her daughter grew increasingly estranged as she underwent appalling changes to her body, thanks to cross-sex hormones. Now 21, this young woman has completed her transition, although she is bound to a lifetime of cross-sex hormone treatments. And she is bitterly unhappy. She is now so depressed about how she looks that she only leaves her home a few times a year, deeply disguised. Her family has been torn apart. I ask you: How was she any different from the generations of Australian teenagers who have been depressed or confused as they enter puberty? How was she any different from them in seeking the approval of her peers and society at large and in seeking the attention that all teenagers need as they approach the dawning prospect of adulthood? She wasn't. The difference was that she's part of a generation that is being used to push a political agenda that is supported and promoted by many senators in this chamber.

As Professor Parkinson and Dr Wilson have said, this issue deserves the closest public scrutiny. They have been joined by the National Association of Practising Psychiatrists, no less, in calling for an inquiry. Families that have been caused to suffer by this cult deserve the opportunity to tell their stories. If you oppose this, you are a science denier. If you oppose this, you are deliberately ignoring experts who know a great deal more about it than you do. If you oppose this, you are telling these Australian families you don't care about their trauma. You will be telling these families you don't care about their children. You will be telling these families you care more about your political agenda than the wellbeing of the most vulnerable people in our Australian society.

I ask: what are you afraid of? What is the problem? Are you afraid of the evidence that will emerge to expose this cult for what it is? You are afraid you'll be exposed as complicit in the experimentation which has been proven to destroy lives. Mark my words: if you deny this inquiry, you will not escape accountability because the Australian people are actually demanding answers to this, as did those mothers who walked the halls of this Parliament House at the end of last year. When they came to me, I said, 'What reaction have you had?' 'Great reaction from the senators; they are all in support of a Senate inquiry.'

This is not a bill; it is a Senate inquiry to give these people the opportunity to have their say to tell us what is actually happening out there with their children. You are not asking me the questions. I am just putting forward on behalf of the people that I represent that they want to have a voice. They want to be able to put their stories across. Their children's lives have been destroyed. They have lost control of their children, and you will not give them this. Labor voted against it last time, and the Greens fully voted against this as well. So did some on the crossbench.

Oh, yes, and your comment, Senator McKim, is exactly the same, and you will do exactly the same again in pushing your own agenda. You don't care about the children of this nation, you don't care about the families, and these people want to have a voice and a say. There is no problem with having an investigation. You might have your own issues. No-one is saying to you that you can't stop your children from having puberty blockers and the rest of it. But give the parents an opportunity to have their say and tell us the impact it's had on their lives. There is nothing wrong with giving people a say on this. It appals me that you do not understand. You are not here to be a voice of the people of this nation who are crying out for something to be done about this. They want to be heard—that is all they want—so just give them the opportunity to have this Senate inquiry so that they can actually be heard and then make up your minds. Let the report come down, and then put it to the whole parliament. There's nothing wrong with asking for that for these people calling on us to do this.

The whole country is going woke, and it is just ridiculous the way we are going. Many people ring me up and say: 'What the hell is happening? Is it in the water in the Canberra bubble? What is on the minds of these politicians that they can't understand what is happening out here in our communities to our children, in our schools in what we teach the kids, in what we are telling the young ones and all the rest of it?' Keep your LGBTIQ to yourself behind your own bloody closed doors. Leave the children alone. They don't have a right to be put through your sense of what you want to say through the teachers and everyone. Leave the children alone. This is to do with things happening in their own homes, not you pushing your own agenda on innocent children's minds for what they should be or whether they are a girl or a boy. I have never heard of anything so disgusting in all my life as what is happening in our schools now to our young innocent children. I call on the chamber: please consider this motion. It is not a bill. It is about giving the people of Australia the opportunity to have their say.