The news that parents in Victoria are distraught and facing prosecutions because of the Victorian laws which prohibit proper counselling for gender confused children must cause the Tasmanian Government to reject the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute’s recommendations for similar laws in Tasmania.
The vice of the Victorian laws which mandate the false and outmoded affirmation therapy which causes irreversible harm to vulnerable children is now being felt in Victoria. As the Daily Mirror reports on 14 August 2022:
So far-reaching is the new law that even trying to arrange counselling and expert assessment for their kids could lead to parents – and the mental health professionals – being prosecuted if the advice did anything other than affirm the children’s newly-discovered gender dysphoria. Many parents feel trapped, unable to do anything to prevent their children pursuing potentially irreversible and harmful changes – from chest-binding to taking hormone blockers and ultimately sex-change surgery.
These are precisely the same laws that the TLRI wants to bring into Tasmania and which are now being considered by the Rockliff Government. We must learn from the mistakes of Victoria and reject such laws.
One Victorian Mum is reported as saying “My daughter needs help, but the government has passed a law that makes it so difficult for this to take place… It feels like the government is interfering in families and personal relationships. It is very enraging to think that.”
As experts like psychologist Dr Diana Kenny and Professor Patrick Parkinson speak out against such laws and affirmation therapy, and the rest of the world moves away from this outmoded idea, Tasmania must not follow the Victorian Model.
Please call on the Premier and the Attorney General, for the sake of Tasmania’s vulnerable children, to listen to the experts and the science and refuse to yield to the calls of activists. Say to them that before any action is taken the Government should conduct an unbiased judicial inquiry into affirmation therapy and the issue of counselling generally. Tasmania’s vulnerable kids and people deserve no less.
