Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill.

Leave granted.

I table an explanatory memorandum and seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

The Childhood Gender Transition Prohibition Bill 2023 will prohibit health practitioners from knowingly providing gender clinical interventions to a minor that are intended to transition the minor's biological sex as determined by the child's sex organs, chromosomes, and endogenous profiles, and by prohibiting the Commonwealth from entering into arrangements that involve expending funds in a way that provides or facilitates the provision of such interventions.

The Bill seeks to implement Australia's obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child done at New York on 20 November 1989 and in particular Article 3 of the Convention which requires that "In all actions concerning children, whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies, the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration" and Article 19(1) of the Convention which requires that "States Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child."

The Bill defines gender clinical interventions that are intended to transition a minor's biological sex to include performing a surgery that sterilises the minor, including castration, vasectomy, hysterectomy, oophorectomy, metoidioplasty, orchiectomy, penectomy, phalloplasty, vaginoplasty, or performing a mastectomy.

It also includes providing, prescribing, administering, or dispensing prescription drugs that induce transient or permanent infertility, prescription drugs that suppress, block or delay normal puberty, supraphysiologic doses of testosterone to females, supraphysiologic doses of estrogen to males or removing any otherwise healthy or non-diseased body part or tissue.

Despite their ceaseless rhetoric about transparency, mental health, and social justice, Labor and the Greens consistently fail to speak in support of some of the most vulnerable members of society—children and teenagers.

Over the past decade or so there has been a drastic increase in the number of children and teenagers voicing confusion about their own gender dysphoria. As reported in The Daily Telegraph late last year, a Freedom of Information request revealed that:

"There were 2067 young people attending public [gender] clinics in 2021 [in Australia], almost 10 times the number in 2014, when there were 211 children. The number of under 18s being prescribed puberty suppressing drugs shot up from five in 2014 to 624 in 2019…"

This increase in the number of young people seeking such "treatment" is not isolated to Australia. The infamous Tavistock Centre's numbers of gender dysphoria treatments in under 18s increased "from 200 in 2011-12 to 2000 in 2016-17."

Our medical establishment should be aiming to promote the connection, discipline, and stability that empowers young people to live flourishing lives. Instead, confused, and vulnerable young people, who today carry heavy burdens, are placed on the path of "transitioning" upon the slightest hint of confusion, and they are wrongly told by adults that it is the path to peace and fulfilment.

Gender dysphoria is not an innate psychological condition—nobody is born in "the wrong body." These young people are confused boys and girls growing up in a confusing world. Gender dysphoria is a social phenomenon, a trend, and the Australian government should be investigating the causes of this trend and shutting down these so-called treatment options to really help these young people before they do irreversible damage to their bodies.

American author Abigail Shrier, who has researched this topic extensively, has described the phenomena of teenaged girls embracing trans ideology as a "social contagion"—something done to fit in, belong to an in-group, and forge an identity for themselves. This makes sense given the very rapid rise of the trans phenomenon, and the sudden uptick in girls identifying as "trans."

We're now starting to understand the harm being done by this movement through an alternative and growing movement of those who have been referred to as "detransitioners." These are people who were encouraged to pursue the path of puberty-suppressing drugs and even surgery to remove their breasts and/or genitalia only to realise after the fact that their gender did in fact accord with their biology. They now question why they were ever allowed, or encouraged, to pursue this path with little, if any, meaningful examination of their mental health, personal lives, family situations, and so on. Many of them describe feeling depressed beforehand and this factor being ignored.

The path to "transitioning" is usually the result of a long process of emulating the opposite gender, which is affirmed by their friends, teachers, co-workers, and virtually everyone in their social circle. After all, nobody wants to lose their job for being "transphobic," and people naively believe that affirming this behaviour will help the troubled young person in question. Unfortunately, the result of this affirmation is the tacit approval of life-changing, irreversible procedures that render these young people infertile, harm their bodies, do nothing to cure their mental health issues, and leave them more lost and confused than ever.

This is allowed to occur even though children generally grow out of confusion about their gender. As Bernard Lane has written for The Australian, "In past studies, about 60-80 per cent of children diagnosed with dysphoria as young as three or four grew out of it, without need of medical treatment that can make them infertile and permanently dependent on doctors… A rise in detransitioners has been predicted, as more young adults emerge with medical complications and untreated psychological issues. Many reportedly present at gender clinics with pre-existing mental health problems, autism spectrum disorder, ¬awkward same-sex attraction, sexual abuse, or family trauma." Imagine if that 60-80 per cent were pre-emptively placed on puberty blockers.

Furthermore, why are children as young as three or four years old being diagnosed with gender dysphoria? The notion that some "expert" is qualified to tell a child that they are, in fact, the opposite gender to their biological sex is heinous and absurd. It is not without just cause that many parents feel that the educational and medical establishments are out to get their children.

There is also a growing number of YouTube channels of people (usually women) who are in the process of detransitioning and documenting their experiences. The ideologues in health and education departments either ignore them or are unaware of them. As one U.S. woman who radically altered her body and is now trying to reverse the process said, "I'm angry. What's going to happen to the kids and the youth… I'm sad for humanity and the children and what's going to happen." Listening to their stories is distressing and highlights the urgent need to prevent this from happening to other vulnerable young people.

Indeed, studies show that most children who experience gender dysphoria grow out of it as the reach adulthood. In one 2008 study, only 3 out of the 25 female subjects who had sought treatment for gender identity disorder had persisted in their "transition." In another study from 2013, 47 out of 127 children had persisted with the "treatment,", and the children were still only 15 when the study was concluded, having been under 12 when referred to a gender identity clinic.

Simply put, it is not unusual for children and teenagers to desist with their "transition" after a period. Why, then, are we allowing this? Because we are so often told that allowing and encouraging young people to "transition" is essential to their mental health. We are told that we must indulge the false belief that one's gender can be other than their biological sex if we want to "save trans lives." This is an emotionally manipulative, guilt-tripping tactic used to bully sensible, well-meaning people into going along with something irrational. We should be seeking to treat the underlying mental health conditions and insecurities, as well as cultural issues, that give rise to gender dysphoria, not encouraging it in the misguided hope that if we affirm it enough, sufferers will somehow get better. They don't.

If gender dysphoria is reflective of a treatable, or even passing, psychological condition, likely influenced by the confusing messages that children are bombarded with on social media, entertainment, and in schools, then affirming it is one of the most harmful things our society does. If Labor and the Greens really cared about these young people, they would pursue the truth.

It is precisely because we care about vulnerable young people that we must speak the truth. Make no mistake, those who fail to do so will, in time, be deemed as being on the wrong side of history. Sooner or later, the public will see how dangerous this is, and trans ideology will be relegated to a folly of the past. The question is, how many more young lives will be devastated before that happens?

It is for all of these reasons that I am introducing this Bill in the hopes that this Parliament will take the right course of action and protect our young people. If a person is under 18 in Australia, they are forbidden from buying alcoholic drinks, buying cigarettes, buying R-rated media, and getting a tattoo. If they are under 16, they are forbidden from driving a car. Yet we are placing children on puberty-suppressing drugs which stunt their physical development due to what may accurately be described as a social contagion and a symptom of underlying mental health issues. This contradiction reveals a society that is failing to protect its children.

I hope that all members of our Parliament will do the right thing and stand up to the ideologues who confuse and victimise our children, and that Australia will lead the way in ensuring that no more irreversible damage is done to our children.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.