In shocking news that should shock no-one who has paid attention to how any of these politics operate, the Albanese’s pre-emptive move to review the clinical guidelines around trans and gender healthcare for kids to try and starve off it becoming the political football of the right, has done absolutely nothing to stop vulnerable kids and their families from becoming the political football of the right.

In the senate overnight, Coalition senators, along with other far right senators, voted for Pauline Hanson’s motion for a senate inquiry into medical care for trans kids. So that is a thing that will happen now and will no doubt grab sensationalist headlines and make the mental health of trans children a political point scoring exercise.

Health minister Mark Butler was asked about it this morning on ABC TV and said he had been hoping the review he had ordered would have stopped the issue from becoming an election issue:

I was, because playing politics around the health and the lives – importantly, the mental health – of some of Australia’s most vulnerable young people is, frankly, an appalling thing to do.
We have issued a review by the national health Medical Research Council which has a statutory charter to issue clinical guidelines across the health system. It’s been doing it for decades. It unarguably is the pre-eminent authority to do that. Frankly, anyone who doesn’t accept the role of the NHMRC to do this work – and I thought Peter Dutton and the Shadow Health Minister, Anne Ruston, did – anyone who doesn’t just let them get get along and do their job, frankly, is playing politics on this issue.