Liberal senator Alex Antic’s bill to ban child gender therapy

All forms of gender reassignment treatment and surgery would be banned for those aged under 18 under the bill.

South Australian Liberal senator Alex Antic. Picture: NewsWire / Monique Harmer

All forms of gender reassignment treatment and surgery would be banned for those aged under 18 – including the controversial and increasing use of puberty blockers – under a bill proposed by conser­vative ­Liberal senator Alex Antic.

The private members bill would allow teenagers to change gender only in the most exceptional circumstances when diagnosed with long-recognised sexual development disorders.

Senator Antic said he had been motivated by growing community disquiet over the explosion in the number of young people “transitioning” and believed that in many cases youths were making the decision not on the basis of genuine medical issues but pressure from peers and health professionals.

He cited the increase in numbers over the past decade in Australia, pointing to a 2023 Freedom of Information request showing the number of under-18s being prescribed puberty suppressing drugs had skyrocketed from just five in 2014 to 624 in 2019.

The same FOI request showed that as of 2021 there were 2067 young people attending public gender clinics, almost 10 times the number in 2014 when there were just 211.

Senator Antic said there was growing evidence from overseas showing many young people who made the decision to change gender came to regret it, and that the state should neither encourage nor enable the young to make such a life-altering decision.

“There is a growing number of young people who, having sought ‘gender-affirming care’, including hormone therapies and surgery, now believe that pursuing this course of action was a mistake and are seeking to undo the damage done to their bodies,” Senator Antic told The Australian.

“Such people have become known as ‘detransitioners’. This suggests that gender-affirming care is not the right course of action for those experiencing gender dysphoria – especially vulnerable young people.

“Why are children as young as three or four years old being diagnosed with gender dysphoria? The notion that some ‘expert’ is qualified to tell a child that they are, in fact, the opposite gender to their biological sex is absurd.”

Senator Antic stressed that his bill was being put forward in a private capacity and was not Liberal Party policy, but he said that he had already spoken to colleagues who were strongly supportive of his proposal.

The conservative senator has become a polarising figure in South Australia and was outspoken against the one-term, moderate-dominated state government of Steven Marshall that was defeated by Labor last year.

Senator Antic has been linked since to a surge in new Liberal Party members, many of them from suburban churches who were angered by senior moderates within the Marshall government over their support for late-term abortion and euthanasia laws.

One SA moderate labelled ­Senator Antic’s transgender bill a “headline-grabber” and warned the Liberal Party both in SA and nationally against “getting tied up and obsessed with fringe culture war crusades”.

“We all saw how that’s played out in Victoria,” the figure said in reference to the split within Victorian Liberals over the expulsion of Upper House MP Moira Deeming for attending an anti-trans rally which was crashed by Nazi sympathisers.

“The last thing we need is another state or even a national brawl along those lines.”

But Senator Antic said the bill was merely a reflection of mainstream concern over the surging number of trans cases and the “flimsy” science behind the decision of young people to change gender. He said his bill was based on the international laws governing the rights of the child, saying the treatment of young people under the current laws was a human rights issue.

“We are seeing an epidemic of detransitioners who have been irreparably harmed by such procedures, meaning legislation is required for Australia to meet its human rights obligations,” Senator Antic said.

“If a person is under 18, they are forbidden from buying alcoholic drinks, buying cigarettes, buying R-rated media, and getting a tattoo. If they are under 16, they are forbidden from driving a car. Yet we are placing children on puberty-suppressing drugs which stunt their physical development.”

If passed, the bill would prohibit health practitioners from providing interventions to a minor that are intended to transition the minor’s biological sex as determined by sex organs, chromosomes and endogenous profiles.