Protect minors from bad choices

The expulsion of Greens founder and long-time environmental activist Drew Hutton, 78, from the party has highlighted the dangers of subjecting a generation of vulnerable children to what he describes, accurately, as “incredibly radical transformations to their bodies wrought around them with puberty blockers and other treatments”.

The heart of the issue is free speech, Jamie Walker wrote on Saturday. That includes not questioning the party platform, which holds that trans and gender-diverse young people should have the freedom to affirm their gender and that any “medical intervention”, importantly, should be guided by the young person.

That approach is questioned by many, including former Greens member, election candidate and psychologist Rachel Hannam, who believes that in many cases, therapy, not medical intervention, is better. The danger, as Mr Hutton says, is: “We’re talking about a whole generation of kids who are really being experimented on in ways that are completely unacceptable.”

And sometimes they are undergoing or being offered life-changing procedures without the agreement of parents, who believe their sexuality and gender are still evolving. That worried the parents of a 13-year-old known as Charlie, who was diagnosed with “gender dysphoria” and over six months moved from being a homosexual girl to being pansexual to being a homosexual boy, back to being a girl who liked boys, Christine Middap reported.

Despite Charlie’s ongoing development, the diagnosis opened the way for her to begin hormone treatment at a gender clinic, an approach that excluded her parents. Nothing they could say, no request for second opinions or suggestions of a “wait and see” approach, cut any ice. In that sad, fraught case, the parent-child relationship broke down and Charlie “divorced” her family, but backed away from treatment.

In complex, difficult cases, when options are uncertain and research is still unfolding, laws and practices allowing minors to make their own decisions to opt for radical medical treatment, against the wishes of parents, are irresponsible and wrong. The extent to which it happens is unclear.

In December, ABS figures showed 178,900 people aged 16 and over reported their gender was different to their sex recorded at birth. The 16-24 age group was the most likely of all age groups to be trans and gender-diverse but the data did not capture the growing number of younger adolescents affected.

Forcing political party members, under threat of expulsion, to toe the line on such an issue is making the Greens an “authoritarian, doctrinaire, unlikeable party”, as Mr Hutton has found. Its lack of respect for free speech is deeply disturbing.