The Tasmanian Government is planning to introduced the Justice Miscellaneous (Conversion Practices) Bill 2024, framing it as a measure to end harmful “conversion therapy.” While no one disputes the need to prevent coercive practices aimed at erasing sexual orientation, this Bill goes much further. By extending its reach to gender identity, it risks creating a climate where doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists are afraid to provide the very care vulnerable children need.
The Real Problem: Gender Identity in the Bill
The Bill defines “conversion practices” so broadly that it sweeps up any attempt to “suppress or change a person’s gender identity.” This is deeply problematic.
- A child presenting with gender dysphoria deserves a full, careful, psychotherapeutic exploration of their distress.
- However, under this Bill, if a therapist helps a child explore underlying trauma, mental illness, or social factors contributing to their gender distress, they could be accused of attempting “conversion.”
- The effect will be to shut down open clinical inquiry, pushing medical professionals toward a single pathway: unquestioning affirmation.
Lessons From the Cass Review
The Cass Review in the UK highlighted the dangers of such a one-track approach. It found that the evidence base for “gender-affirming care” is weak, inconsistent, and often driven by ideology rather than medicine. It recommended comprehensive psychological support, careful assessment, and a cautious approach to medical interventions.
Yet if Tasmania passes this Bill as written, doctors who follow the Cass model could find themselves accused of “conversion therapy” simply for offering psychotherapy instead of fast-tracking hormones.
Silencing Professionals, Endangering Children
This legislation creates a perverse incentive:
- Doctors may avoid discussing alternatives to medicalisation for fear of prosecution.
- Parents could be silenced if they question whether medical transition is the right step for their child.
- Children lose out, as their mental health needs and complex life circumstances go unexplored.
Far from protecting young people, the Bill risks locking them into irreversible medical pathways while outlawing the very therapies that could help them understand themselves better.
What Women Speak Tasmania Recommends
- Separate sexual orientation from gender identity in legislation. The two issues are distinct and must not be conflated.
- Ensure the Bill does not criminalise legitimate psychotherapeutic care for children with gender dysphoria.
- Align Tasmanian law with the evidence-based, cautious approach now taken in the UK, Finland, Sweden, and Norway.
- Protect clinicians’ freedom to practice medicine responsibly and ethically.
Conclusion
Tasmania must not pass a law that shuts down evidence-based care. Protecting children means allowing full therapeutic exploration, not forcing doctors and families into silence or blind affirmation.
Women Speak Tasmania calls for urgent amendments to the Conversion Practices Bill 2024 to ensure that safeguarding—not ideology—guides our law.