A 213-page review of the Cairns Gender Clinic has produced damning findings that show children being put on puberty blockers and testosterone without proper consent, documentation or safeguards, says the Family First party.
“This is not healthcare, it’s ideology trumping child safety,” says Family First Party National Director and NSW Legislative Council candidate Lyle Shelton.
Mr Shelton has called on the state and federal governments to bring the so-called “gender affirmation” experiment on children to an immediate end, following the damning review into the Cairns paediatric gender health service.
Commissioned by Queensland Health Director-General David Rosengren in January 2025 and released last week, the report found the clinical environment was “not reliably safe for paediatric clients”, with mixed adult-child settings, unsecured medications and incomplete risk assessments for high-risk adolescents.
“Children as young as 12 were commenced on puberty blockers, with others placed on testosterone, without adequate documentation of assessments or monitoring,” the investigators found.
A December 2024 audit of 17 patient files revealed “major deficiencies” including incomplete clinical notes, missing baseline tests, absence of consent documentation and lack of paediatric or mental health input.
In many cases, Gillick competency assessments were “either not done or not recorded”. Some young people with developmental delays were prescribed medication despite lacking the capacity to understand the treatment.
Staff told investigators they were asked to prescribe puberty blockers “almost as a technician rather than as part of a multidisciplinary assessment” and feared reprisal for raising patient safety concerns. Parents who objected to treatment were “basically alienated”.
Mr Shelton said the findings confirmed what Family First has warned for years.
“When children are fast-tracked from psychology to hormones within weeks, when consent is not properly documented, when bone density tests are missed and parents are sidelined, that is not compassionate care — it is a systemic failure,” he says.
Mr Shelton also pointed to last week’s decision in the United States, where the American Medical Association and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons moved to no longer support child gender transition treatments, citing weak evidence and serious risk.
“LGBTQA+ child gender transition therapy will go down in history as the biggest medical scandal of our time,” Mr Shelton said.
“All Australian governments must legislate immediately to ban puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery for minors. Children deserve protection — not irreversible medical experimentation. This has to end – now.”
