Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has been given more than three years to conduct its Review of Australia’s youth gender transition guidelines. I sometimes indulge a thought that the reason the NHMRC needs this much time is because the question it is dealing with is one that addresses the relationship between God and humankind.
This is a thought that is seldom voiced these days. Rarely will you find an Australian politician with the courage to say outright that the medical suppression of puberty is an interference in Nature and God’s plan. Instead, modern-day verbiage is that biological sex is ‘assigned’ at birth, with the inference that it can be medically reassigned, and any notion associated with Divinity is considered archaic.
But, even allowing ‘assigned’ to be a suitable word, assigned by whom? If something is assigned, there is an assignor and an assignee. In the matter of biological sex, who or what is the assignor? The answer can only be Nature, Providence, or an Omnipotent Being, all of which are synonymous with God. On any view, therefore, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that reassigning biological sex amounts to correcting God.
The general opinion is that the extraordinary amount of time allocated for the Review has nothing to do with Divinity anyway. It is said to be attributable only to our Prime Minister’s propensity for deferring difficult decisions for as long as he can. Unlike countries that have taken decisive action, whether in favour or against gender transition, the Albanese government chose the middle road of commissioning the NHMRC to undertake a Review whilst allowing the practice of youth gender transition to continue. The Review was announced by Health Minister Mark Butler on 31 January 2025 and the NHMRC has been told to deliver its final recommendations in April 2028. As that is likely to be the month of the next federal election, it is a time when the Prime Minister may be preparing, if exit the political stage.
Nonetheless, the present month, July 2026, is an important one in the course of the Review. Its interim advice concerning the safety and efficacy of puberty blockers, which represent stage one in the gender transition process, is due in ‘mid-2026’.
What will this interim advice be? On its web site, the NHMRC says that, to ensure ‘a diversity of perspectives’, it has consulted all interested groups. My own enquiries suggest that this is a qualified form of diversity which excludes Christian views, and it is possibly for this reason that people I have spoken to consider the chances of the NHMRC recommending the banning of puberty blockers pending further research, thereby following the lead of countries including the UK and New Zealand, are virtually nil. The widespread prediction is that NHMRC will pander to the incumbent federal government either by declaring gender transitions treatments to be safe or by making a non-decision.
However, I hold out hope of a different outcome. I note that, in their online profiles, none of the ‘bioethics and health law experts’ working for the NHMRC on this matter give their preferred pronouns, which I take as an indication that they are uninfected by ideology and disposed to common sense. I hazard a bet, too, that most of them grew up in church-going families and attended Catholic schools, or schools of any Christian denomination, which taught an acceptance of fate and instilled the universal understanding that none of us are equal or superior to God.
I ask them to do away with the pretense that that the question they are considering is a medical one. As all the world knows, and as is evidenced by western countries alternating one to the next on the issue of puberty blockers, it is political. It follows that there is only one responsible course of action for the NHMRC to take. It is to do what the UK, New Zealand, Finland, Sweden and many US states have done. Not only will this ensure safety by allowing for further research and a regulated clinical trial of the treatment. It will give all Australians time to pause and reflect.
Of the 1.6 million animal species that inhabit earth, all of a biological male-female binary, only humankind has been blessed with intellect and a capacity to reason. Our duty is to be grateful for that gift and to exercise it wisely.
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