Victoria’s Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021 is currently under review by the Victorian Law Reform Commission (VLRC). The Commission is conducting a focused review of how the ban is working in practice, and submissions closed this week.
AAWAA has been working in this area for some time. We have submitted to multiple Australian government consultations — in Tasmania, New South Wales, and Queensland — as well as to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, raising concerns about the unintended consequences of conversion practices legislation as it applies to gender identity. Our Victorian submission draws on that body of work.
What we support and where the problem lies
The history of so-called ‘gay conversion’ therapy is one of documented cruelty, causing profound and lasting harm to same-sex attracted people, disproportionately to lesbians and gay men. Lesbians are a core constituent of AAWAA: we support a legislative ban on practices that seek to change or suppress same-sex attraction, backed by appropriate civil and criminal sanctions.
But it is precisely because we support the objectives of this legislation that we are concerned about how it is operating in practice, particularly in relation to its second protected characteristic: gender identity.
The Victorian Act makes it a criminal offence, carrying up to ten years’ imprisonment, to engage in a “change or suppression practice.” That prohibition applies whether or not the person consents to the practice. It applies to clinicians, parents, and anyone else. And critically, the definition of what constitutes a prohibited practice is broad enough that a clinician who explores, rather than immediately affirms, a young person’s gender distress cannot know with confidence whether their conduct is caught by the law.
This is not a theoretical concern. It is having real consequences now, in Victoria.
The chilling effect
The Clinical Advisory Network on Sex and Gender, a UK clinical body, has reported that the Victorian Act has had “a chilling effect on therapists there, many of whom have stopped treating people with gender dysphoria for fear of being accused of conversion therapy.” This was confirmed in the recent Family Court decision Re Devin FedCFamC1F 211, cited in the Commission’s own consultation paper, where evidence was given that a father had contacted hundreds of therapists in Victoria unwilling to treat a gender-distressed child because of the Act. A paediatrician gave evidence that she was unaware of any Victorian practitioners willing to offer non-affirming or exploratory approaches. The father had to look interstate to find a clinician willing to see his child.
Meanwhile, health authorities in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and the United Kingdom — each following independent systematic evidence reviews — have moved away from blanket affirmation as the first-line clinical response to gender dysphoria in young people, towards exploratory psychological care. Victorian clinicians who wish to follow that international evidence base are operating under legal threat.
Who is being harmed
The young people most affected are not who the Act was designed to protect. Clinical evidence shows that a high proportion of young people presenting at gender clinics report same-sex or both-sex attraction. A significant proportion of detransitioners report that their transgender identity had masked same-sex attraction. These young people — disproportionately girls — deserve careful, open clinical assessment before any irreversible pathway is pursued. Where exploratory therapy is foreclosed by legal uncertainty, they may instead be directed towards medical pathways that ultimately foreclose, rather than affirm, their adult sexual orientation.
In this way, the Act risks facilitating a contemporary form of the very suppression of same-sex attraction it was enacted to prevent. The UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, Reem Alsalem, made precisely this point in welcoming the UK’s Cass Review in 2024, cautioning that conversion therapy legislation must not prevent young women from being supported holistically, and must ensure that transition does not become the only option acceptable to discuss.
What needs to change
Our submission makes three targeted recommendations, all of which are consistent with the Act’s core purpose.
First, the Act should explicitly clarify that professional exploratory psychological care — care that explores rather than directs a young person’s understanding of their gender identity or sexual orientation — does not constitute a change or suppression practice.
Second, the Act should include an explicit parental discussion carve-out, consistent with the approach already taken in the NSW Conversion Practices Ban Act 2024, which makes clear that parents discussing matters relating to sexual orientation, gender identity, sexual activity or religion with their children does not constitute a conversion practice. No equivalent provision exists in the Victorian Act. Parents of gender-distressed children should not face legal uncertainty about whether a candid conversation with their own child is a criminal act.
Third, the structural asymmetry in the Act’s exclusions — which explicitly protect affirmative practices but contain no equivalent protection for exploratory or watchful-waiting approaches — should be corrected by legislative amendment. No amount of guidance material or public education can resolve an ambiguity that is embedded in the legislation itself.
Why this matters
The VLRC review is not about whether the Act should exist: it is about whether it is working as intended. On the evidence, it is not — at least not in relation to gender identity. The Act is functioning as a deterrent not against coercive gay conversion practices, but against the careful, evidence-based clinical and parental engagement that vulnerable young people need.
That is not what the legislation was for. The Commission has an opportunity to say so, and to recommend amendments that would fix it. We hope it takes that opportunity.
Read the full submission, below.
