Tuesday, 4 February 2025

Gender services

Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:23): (1359) My adjournment matter is to the health minister, and the action I seek is that she makes a commitment to expand and improve access to transgender health care in this state, as recommended by coroner Ingrid Giles in last year’s investigation into the tragic deaths of five Victorian trans women.

Last week the Queensland Liberal–National government made the disgraceful decision to halt essential transgender healthcare measures for people under the age of 18. The Queensland state government made this decision not based on the facts but based on a tired ideological viewpoint that the far right have been desperate to import into this country for years now. The Australian Medical Association has implored us all to listen to doctors ahead of our own ideological views. Every single prior investigation into this health care in this country has come back with the same conclusions: transgender health care needs urgent investment. There need to be fewer barriers to gender-affirming health care, more clinics, more support for these services, uncompromising support, to make trans health care safer and more accessible for trans and gender-diverse people of all ages.

To the federal government, make it clear you support trans and gender-diverse people. To the state government, if you genuinely support transgender health care, then what is the delay in implementing the recommendations from coroner Ingrid Giles? These people are some of the most vulnerable in this country, with high rates of depression, anxiety and extreme mental distress. But this community of young people, I must implore, is strong. They deserve our unwavering support. If you oppose transgender health care, you oppose science, you oppose human rights and you oppose protecting young people, and we all see you for what you are.