We need a plebiscite on child gender transition

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) is taking an inordinate amount of time to deliver its interim advice on the safety of puberty blockers for children. It has already had nineteen months. Their website originally said it would be provided in ‘mid-2026’, a deadline which was extended on a technicality to the end of August, but at the time of writing there is still no smoke from the NHMRC chimney.

Talk about adding to the worries of parents of gender dysphoric children. Life is stressful enough without a recalcitrant NHMRC failing to pronounce on whether the treatments are safe. The NHMRC’s indifference to affected families is seen even in the promise on its website that people who subscribe by entering an email address will receive periodic updates. After all this time, the number of updates received by subscribers amounts to nought.

Its planning was flawed from the outset. Commissioned on 31 January 2025, the NHMRC appointed a panel of experts in bioethics, health law and child psychology to examine and report on the issue, but instead of appointing a manageable four or five experts, it appointed eighteen, four of whom are on its Gender Guidelines Governance Committee and fourteen on its Gender Guidelines Development Committee.

Then, according to their online profiles, all eighteen experts are already engaged in full-time careers in academia or medicine with many also serving on this or that board. No wonder they have fallen behind. Their work for the NHMRC, for which they are receiving a tax-payer funded stipend, would appear to have extended little beyond the exchange of collegial pleasantries on a Sunday afternoon Whats-app group chat. Earlier this year, former Director-General of ASIO, Dennis Richardson, stepped down from his role in the Bondi Royal Commission, seeing himself as surplus to requirements and embarrassed by the $5,500 a day he was receiving. We do not see any of the NHMRC Eighteen following his example despite being unable to perform their function.

But, having had such an extensive period, what is the real cause of their delay? What is the problem they have encountered?

The answer is politics, not medicine. The claim that the decision they are making is a medical one, in the form of an assessment of the evidence base for the safety of the drugs being used off-label as puberty blockers, must rank alongside Australia’s greatest ever shams. With governments around the world alternating one to the next in favour or against that evidence base, it is all politics. The progressive side will always allow youth gender transition whilst the conservative side will always prohibit it.

It follows that a nation’s policy on gender transition will be reversed with every change of government, as has been seen once already in the US. This is the aspect that is being overlooked.  As a society we claim to care for our children whilst leaving them to the political winds. Now and into the future, the destinies of gender dysphoric children will be determined firstly by the biological sex they are born with, and secondly by the political persuasion of the government that is in power during their developmental years.

The political confusion is heightened all the more in Australia by the uncertainty over whether the issue belongs to state or federal jurisdiction. Queensland has acted unilaterally by banning puberty blockers whilst the federal government has commissioned a ‘national’ review on the clinical guidelines − allowing the practice to continue at pace in the meantime. The legal and political framework is a diabolical mess, one that no one in authority shows any real willingness to take ownership of.

If calls for a solution that transcends government altogether, one that is lasting and binding and supersedes party politics − a national plebiscite. If same-sex marriage was deemed worthy of a postal-survey ‘plebiscite’ in 2017, so too does the far more important issue of child gender transition. The former is novelty in comparison to the latter. The question needs to be put to the Australian pubic: should people under the age of eighteen be permitted to medically change their biological sex? Yes or no.

The one heartening aspect of the NHMRC proceeding is that the eighteen experts appear to be divided. It had been assumed that the panel had been stacked with ideologists and that a finding in favour of puberty blockers would be a fait accompli. Clearly, however, there is some resistance. Who amongst the eighteen these heroes are is not yet known, but by their actions they have brought about an unexpected diversity of opinion, one which appears to have precipitated a deadlock. 

This deadlock should tell the federal government everything it needs to know. Like no other political or ideological issue, the question of child gender transition calls for resolution by plebiscite. Take the matter to the people and send the NHMRC experts back to their day jobs.