Entsch petitions for change
Queensland federal MP Warren Entsch has thrown his support behind a petition calling for better health care for intersex and trans people in Queensland.
Entsch said Queensland’s sex and gender-diverse community is being placed at risk because of a lack of funding for health services.
His call follows recent reports Brisbane’s Gender Clinic, which assists people when transitioning genders, may be forced to close its doors due to a lack of resourcing.
“Lives are lost every year because people cannot access the services that they sorely need,” Entsch said in a statement.
“Access to proper counselling, therapy, treatments and cosmetic surgery is essential to many gender diverse people to enable them live happy and fulfilling lives.
“These services are essential so gender diverse people can blend and be accepted into society and reduce the risk of discrimination, vilification, abuse and violence that they might face.”
Entsch accused the Bligh Government of being slow to act on new standards of care recommendations set out by the World Professional Association of Transgender Health recently.
“The intersex, transsexual, transgender and gender diverse community might be only a minority group, but enough is enough,” he said.
A petition, which has so far collected around 300 signatures, is running on change.org under the title Better Healthcare for Transsexual, Transgender, Gender Diverse Australians.
Entsch has also mooted plans for a federal same-sex civil unions bill, instead of marriage. He said he believes a marriage bill will fail in the current Parliament.
Thanks guys for publishing this article about my petition, we really could use a lot more signatures to support the call for better healthcare for a very marginalised group of great Australians.
Queensland Health is in a dreadful mess. Doctors and nursing staff have to do the best they can with limited resources and funding.
For instance, the mentally disabled are frequently assaulted by police and security guards and driven out of hospitals when they desperately need urgent help. We have personally witnessed this brutality at out largest hospital.
Would police and security beat up other sick people screaming in pain??? No just the Mentally disabled. They are seen as a violent.
If the rednecks get into power at the next election our gender diverse community can expect no funding at all. To be confined to a deserted island or worse, put into the whips and stocks.
I can still remember their simplistic solutions for the Gay community. Bible-bashing punishments recommended in the media under Premier Joh and Russell Cooper.
Rip the condom vending machines from the walls in toilets and universities. Public whipping for gays. Crazed fundamentalists running rife throughout our education system. “If the labor Party gets into power, gay’s will come swarming over the boarder et”c.
In our opinion, too much public funding is going to populists agendas such as the Baby bonus, free everything for uninvited boat people, parental leave and private schools….Not to mention an obscene and poor value for a Papal Ambassador to that undemocratic Vatican.
We would expect that some of our pink dollars would be returned to our tax-paying gay community and not only to heterosexual families and their children.
Visit our Queensland Tourism office in Brisbane city and try to get information of up-coming Gay events. You will get the idea about discrimination.