Trump, Queensland, and apathy

On 28 January, the new conservative government in Queensland, Australia, which ousted Labor in October 2024, announced a ban on the public health system providing puberty blockers and gender-affirming care for young transgender people. The ban stops any new patients being able to receive medications at the state’s only gender clinic in Brisbane. Existing patients and private provision can continue (unlike under the ban in Britain).

Tim Nicholls, the health minister for Queensland, cited the UK’s own Cass Review as a factor in the decision to restrict healthcare access.

Medical professionals have condemned the ban and launched an appeal to raise funds for access to private care (not banned). Puberty-blockers continue to be prescribed for other kids (e.g. to stop precocious puberty), as they have been since the 1980s, and evidence from decades of use for transgender kids is that they are safe, reversible, and beneficial.

But the Australian Labor Party has responded weakly. Labor federal health minister Mark Butler has failed to condemn the state ban and instead kicked the can down the road by announcing a federal review into trans healthcare.

Trump

This is as part of a broader wave of attacks on transgender people. Donald Trump in the US announced an executive order almost immediately after taking office to affirm that intersex and transgender people do not exist, and has declared war against so-called “gender ideology”. He is pushing to exclude trans kids from school sport, though for now making no move at federal level to ban puberty-blockers. (Some US states have imposed restrictions).

Across the world, a fight for the dignity, safety and freedoms of transgender people of all ages had been making progress for decades. This is now threatened by a wave of far-right politics that is emboldened to use trans people and gender “ideology” as a bogeyman alongside migrants at the forefront of most “culture wars”.

The far-right are not alone in banging the drum against trans rights. In Britain, especially, some on the left and in the labour-movement have been some of the loudest cheerleaders against trans rights.

Apathy

Largely, the fight for trans rights must overcome apathy among those that are natural allies. Transgender people transgress social norms and are therefore often ridiculed and derided as odd and at the fringes of society. LGB groups and individuals have attempted to distance themselves from trans people, seeing association with them as difficult.

Apathy must be opposed if we are to fight for a better world. Solidarity with trans people across the world!