Dec 19, 2025 - Medical experts, health bodies and LGBTIQ+ organisations have condemned the Queensland Government’s decision to extend its ban on healthcare for trans youth for at least the next six years.
Health Minister Tim Nicholls confirmed on Friday that the freeze on puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones will remain in place until the conclusion of a UK National Health Service trial, which is not expected to finish until 2031.
The decision follows an independent evidence review conducted by former Victorian Chief Psychiatrist Professor Ruth Vine.
However, concerns have been raised about the government’s interpretation of the Vine review. The report highlights the risks of denying care to young people in the public system, including forcing them to seek treatment outside multidisciplinary teams in public hospitals, creating inequities based on socioeconomic status or location, and the fact that withholding care will not contribute to strengthening the evidence base.
Equality Australia CEO Anna Brown:
“Nothing in the Vine report concludes that gender-affirming care is inherently unsafe, ineffective or harmful and the analysis appears to favour the two options that would enable service to resume.
“For the government to use this report to justify extending the ban is extraordinary and profoundly cynical. The minister’s selective interpretation misrepresents the findings and distorts the evidence. The Government needs to explain why it has chosen a pathway assessed as highest risk and of least benefit by its own independent expert review,”
“This decision is devastating for the young people and families whose lives are being directly upended by this ban.
“Politicians should not be inserting themselves into deeply personal medical decisions that rightly belong with patients, families and qualified clinicians.
“Queensland now stands alone as the only state in Australia to strip young people of this essential healthcare.”
Eloise Brook, CEO of AusPATH (the Australian Professional Association for Trans Health) said medical practitioners followed guidelines established through research and clinical evidence.
“AusPATH is deeply dismayed that the Queensland government has ignored its own report and expanded the ban by six years.
“Their own review explicitly warns against removing care from the public system. Doing so shifts responsibility on to private providers, interstate and Queensland’s under resourced front line-services.
“Queensland and UK style bans are the number one source of harm for trans young people around the world.”
Frances Mulcahy, Retired GP and Secretary of QTrans:
“The Queensland Government has been consistent in denying children, young people and their family's agency in the pursuit of best practice health care.
“Proclaiming a time frame based on the UK, with its track record of suppression of gender diversity simply demonstrates disregard for the safety of young Queenslanders.
“The minister is more interested in ideology and cheap dog-whistling to ultra-conservative groups than the safety of young people.”
Jackie Turner, Trans Justice Project:
“Just six days before Christmas the Queensland Government is attacking the rights, health care and happiness of trans youth.
“Gender affirming care is life-changing and often lifesaving health care. It helps trans and gender-diverse young people to be thrive.
“This is a cynical attempt by Minister Nicholls to appeal to a small, hateful minority who don’t want our young people to have the freedom to be themselves.
Nicky Bath Executive Director of LGBTIQA+ Health Australia said:
"The Queensland Government has chosen to prioritise uncertainty over established evidence and international standards of care, entrenching restrictions instead of strengthening support for young people. Announcing this decision on the eve of the holiday period, as peer-led services wind down and following the start of the national social media ban, is a decision that will foreseeably cause harm. It reflects a troubling disregard for the wellbeing of trans young people and the families trying to support them."
