Australia’s centre-left Labor Party Health Minister Mark Butler has ruled out for now any federal restriction on paediatric gender medicine pending new national guidelines expected in 2028.
At the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday, the federal minister was asked by a journalist if he were considering “any kinds of restrictions” in the light of local and international developments adverse to the “gender-affirming” treatment model with its poorly evidenced puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors.
“I’ve done what I think is appropriate from the Commonwealth,” Mr Butler said. The minister recapped his January 31 announcement that the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) would develop new countrywide treatment guidelines for gender-distressed minors.
He had also asked the NHMRC to carry out “a comprehensive review” of the current de facto national guidelines used by state-based health services and issued in 2018 by the gender clinic of the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) Melbourne.
This was prompted by news that his UK Labour counterpart, Health Secretary Wes Streeting, had imposed an indefinite ban on puberty blockers, declaring it “a scandal that [this] medicine was given to vulnerable young children, without proof that it was safe or effective, or that it had gone through the rigorous safeguards of a clinical trial.”
Source: No federal rescue – by Bernard Lane – Gender Clinic News