Family First National Director Lyle Shelton has called on the Federal Government and every state and territory to shut down what he says is a deliberate campaign by activist clinicians to use a new PBS listing for the women's health drug triptorelin as a backdoor around state-based restrictions on prescribing puberty blockers to children.
The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee (PBAC) last week confirmed it will make the General Benefit listing for triptorelin 3.75 mg injection unrestricted, cost-minimised against the goserelin implant already listed for conditions such as endometriosis and breast cancer. Nowhere in PBAC's published reasoning does the Committee refer to prescribing this drug to suppress puberty in gender-dysphoric children — the change was justified purely on cost-effectiveness grounds for existing women's health indications, with PBAC itself flagging a utilisation review in two years "to determine whether there are any changes to the expected utilisation."
"Within hours of this listing being confirmed, gender clinicians were on Facebook celebrating it as a way to get puberty blockers to children confused about their gender for as little as $25 a script, written by any GP, no gatekeeper required," Mr Shelton said. "That is not what PBAC approved this drug for, and everybody popping champagne corks over it knows that perfectly well."
"Trans youth deserved some good news, and this is the best in a long time" — Dr Fiona Bisshop, Facebook, celebrating the listing, to the tune of Get This Party Started.
"Queensland families fought hard for the restrictions Health Minister Tim Nicholls re-imposed after the Supreme Court challenge last October, precisely because the evidence for prescribing puberty blockers to children with gender distress is weak and contested internationally," Mr Shelton said. "Now we have doctors openly saying on social media that a federal PBS decision means they can route around the Minister's directive entirely, by having any GP write an unrestricted script instead of going anywhere near a state-supervised gender clinic."
"One doctor commenting on this very issue publicly asked Dr Bisshop whether promoting an unrestricted women's health listing for paediatric gender transition amounted to billing fraud. That is a fair question, and it deserves a straight answer from the Commonwealth."
Mr Shelton said the episode exposed two failures that governments must move on immediately:
"First, GPs with no training in paediatrics, endocrinology or gender medicine are being told they can now prescribe powerful hormone-suppressing drugs to children, off-label, based on nothing more than a Facebook post. Second, activist clinicians are using a listing intended for adult women's health conditions to override the very state safeguards that were put in place after independent review."
Mr Shelton pointed to the findings of the UK's Cass Review and the subsequent retreat from paediatric puberty blockers across the NHS and several European health systems as evidence that the international clinical consensus has moved away from, not towards, easy access to these drugs for children experiencing gender distress.
"Every state and territory government that has imposed caution on this issue did so for good reason. The Federal Government must not let a cost-minimisation decision by PBAC be hijacked as a de facto national override of those protections," Mr Shelton said.
Family First is calling on:
- The Federal Health Minister and PBAC to publicly clarify that the unrestricted triptorelin listing is not endorsed, and was never intended, for the suppression of puberty in children with gender dysphoria, and to consider a restriction or note to that effect.
- AHPRA and the TGA to investigate GPs advertising or prescribing triptorelin off-label for paediatric gender transition outside their scope of practice and training.
- State and territory governments, including Queensland's, to confirm their existing clinical restrictions and gatekeeping requirements for minors apply regardless of the drug's PBS status or prescribing pathway, and to refer any doctor found to be deliberately circumventing them to the relevant regulator.
"Children deserve caution, evidence and proper oversight — not a race between activist doctors and a pharmaceutical schedule to see who can get to them first," Mr Shelton said.
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