Both AAWAA and the Queensland Women’s Action Alliance (QWAA) have written to the Premier and Deputy Premier of Queensland, as well as the Queensland Minister for Health, to thank them for the Queensland Government’s recent commitment to not support the expansion of gender services for children in Queensland and to instead prioritise the safeguarding of children to ensure that those experiencing gender confusion receive appropriate and balanced care. This is a welcome announcement, indeed.
We urged Messrs Crisafulii, Bleijie, and Nicholls, MPs, to build on this commitment and to disband the Queensland Children’s Gender Service (QCGS), making provisions for young people with gender distress to be treated with psychotherapy through the normal youth mental health services. We drew their attention to some particularly troubling deficiencies in the 2024 evaluation of the QCGS in regards to the approach to treating children experiencing gender confusion in Queensland. These deficiencies are significant enough that they call for the disbanding of the QCGS.
Most worryingly, the evaluation failed to examine the evidence underpinning the ‘gender affirmation’ model used by the clinic, despite claiming that the clinic’s treatments were evidence-based. This is particularly perturbing given the UK’s Cass Review’s findings that such evidence is lacking. Additionally, the evaluation ignored the significant global shift away from the gender-affirmative model in countries such as Sweden, Finland, Norway, and the UK, where growing recognition of the lack of evidence for such treatments has prompted more cautious, research-based approaches.
Alarmingly, the independence and credibility of the QCGS evaluation is called into question, as three of the seven panel members were members of AusPATH, one of whom is an activist from a transgender lobby group. Moreover, the chair of the review was a Queensland Health employee, undermining the impartiality required for an objective evaluation.
In addition to this, and instead of undertaking a critical examination of QCGS practices, the evaluation benchmarked those practices against the Australian Standards of Care, a document that has been exposed by medical researchers as being of very low quality. The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) even declined to include this document in their guideline repository, citing its failure to meet basic quality standards. This flawed foundation has rendered the QCGS evaluation unfit for purpose, as it assesses the clinic’s practices against a failed guideline rather than robust, evidence-based standards.
These shortcomings are compounded by the broader problems with the gender-affirmative model, which focuses on medical interventions (such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and, eventually, surgery) without addressing the complex, underlying factors that contribute to a child’s distress. Many children referred to gender clinics have co-existing mental health conditions (such as depression and anxiety), trauma, or autism, and their gender confusion often correlates with a developing same-sex attraction – raising concerns that transition acts as a form of gay conversion therapy. Furthermore, the increasing number of detransitioners and medical malpractice suits worldwide underscores the long-term harm these interventions can cause.
It is clear that the QCGS must be disbanded, and care for children with gender confusion should be integrated into youth mental health services that provide holistic, evidence-based therapy for all aspects of their well-being.
