Thursday, 16 October 2025

 Bev McARTHUR (Western Victoria) (09:58): I can do no better than quote from today’s Australian newspaper article by Stephanie Bastiaan:

Last week the Australian Human Rights Commission announced Michelle Telfer as a finalist for its human rights award. Less than four months ago, in a landmark Family Court judgment, Justice Andrew Strum slammed Telfer as an activist who misled the court after she appeared as a witness in a case involving a 12-year-old boy whose mother sought to begin puberty blockers even though no formal diagnosis of gender dysphoria had been established through years of treatment.

Strum ordered the boy to be removed from his mother’s custody and prohibited the child from receiving any further “gender-affirming” treatments …

Around the globe, the so-called gender-affirming model of care for children and young people presenting with gender dysphoria is collapsing under the weight of its own evidence, or lack of it. Numerous reviews, including the landmark Cass review in Britain, have concluded that the research underpinning the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries for minors, far from being a settled science, is of very low quality and insufficient to justify their routine use.

Telfer should be facing a jury, not an award. It is not right that this woman, who works at the Royal Children’s Hospital, be recognised for an Australian Human Rights Commission award.