Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Trans and gender-diverse young people need our love, they need our care and they need access to the health support that they need in their lives. This reference, if it went ahead, would be an opportunity to continue to demonise trans and gender-diverse young people, and that is the last thing that they need. In 2020, then health minister Greg Hunt asked for and received advice from the Royal Australasian College of Physicians regarding the care and treatment of trans and gender-diverse children and adolescents, including those seeking medical intervention. The advice from the experts was that gender-affirming health care for trans and gender-diverse young people should be a national priority and that withholding or limiting access to care and treatment would be unethical and would have serious impacts on the health and wellbeing of young people.

It supported the principles underlying the current guidelines—that is, what was being done at that moment was appropriate and, as long as we had continuing investment to meet the needs, that the treatment of trans and gender-diverse young people was being supported. Advice was given under a proposal at that stage that there should be an inquiry, and they essentially said there was no need for an inquiry. What is needed is more resources to accommodate and to treat and appropriately care for the number of trans and gender-diverse young people who are presenting for treatment, absolutely. The number of trans and gender-diverse young people who are presenting for treatment has increased, as more young people are aware of the fact that they are trans or gender diverse or non-binary, or they're questioning their gender.

Go back 50 years and consider how many people in the Australian community identified as being same-sex attracted. It was very few because of the demonisation of people who were gay, lesbian or bisexual, and so anybody who felt that way felt that they had to hide it away from everyone. No way would people come out and be open to their families, to their friends, to their community, and so, not surprisingly, the number who identified as same-sex attracted was tiny. I now want to take you forward to when my wife, Penny, who sadly passed away 3½ years ago, transitioned. At that stage, which was in the early 2000s, while she was exploring her gender identity, she knew next to no-one who was transgender or gender diverse. Her experience up until then—and she was in her mid-40s by that stage—was that she was the only person like herself in the world, essentially. There were a few individuals she knew of, but there was a sense that this was really, really weird. She had suffered her whole life, questioning her gender identity, being put in a box and not being able to be the person she was. It was at that stage that information about trans issues was becoming more accessible with the rise of the internet, and so she discovered that there were actually quite a lot of other people like her. She then managed to explore her gender identity. She transitioned and she flourished—she absolutely flourished.

The rise in the number of young people seeking support is a reflection of the fact that people now know that this is a thing, and that, if they are questioning their gender identity and they want to affirm their gender as not their biological sex, that is possible and that they will be happier people for it. There was a 2022 study, so just last year, that found that access to gender-affirming care was associated with improved mental health outcomes among trans and gender-diverse young people. Access to gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones, was associated with 60 per cent lower odds of moderate or severe depression and 73 per cent lower odds of suicidality over a 12 month follow-up. In short, when young people are able to access the health care they need, their lives are improved because of it.

This referral that we have before us today is coming from a position that demonises trans and gender-diverse people. It is coming from a position that it is a really negative thing that there's an increase in the number of trans and gender-diverse people, and I reject that entirely. I am saddened by the level of hatred and vitriol that is still there towards trans and gender-diverse young people. This is the stuff that does the harm. This is the stuff that makes people feel that they are not welcome. This is the stuff that makes people feel that society does not want them and they have got to hide their true identity, and some of them think that life is not worth living. We do not need another inquiry that is just going to come from this frame of negative attack on trans and gender-diverse people. It would be incredibly damaging, and even though I welcome the contributions that say it will come to my committee so everything is going to be okay, that's not going to be the case. It would be a platform for the bigots, a platform for hate, a platform for harming for so any people, and that is not what is needed. What is needed is to have the health care and the support to show trans and gender-diverse people that they are loved, that they are accepted by society, that their identities are absolutely valid and that they should be celebrated. The Greens want that to occur. We want to work with everyone in this place to realise the importance of that and to realise the value to young people, in particular, of being able to be the people that they really know that they are.