I’m going to save the National Australia Day Council some time and award the 2026 Australian of the Year to Justice Andrew Strum, the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia judge who last week delivered a judgment that drove a stake through the heart of the gender ideology cult.
First reported in The Australian and then picked up by other media outlets, Strum’s decision to prevent a mother from continuing to take her 12-year-old son to Victoria’s Royal Children’s Hospital Gender Clinic or otherwise seek to get him prescribed puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones is not only a win for the child, but for common sense.
The judgment, which is around 60,000 words in length, is not a quick read but it is a delightful one because Strum methodically and meticulously dismantles all the main arguments used by those who advocate for the use of experimental treatments on kids. I have not enjoyed reading a judgment this much since Justice Weinberg’s marvellous dissent in the Pell case.
The background to the case is simple and sad. Parents of a young boy, known as Devin in the court documents, separated when he was four years of age. The mother had main parental responsibility for Devin, with scheduled visits to the father.
Convinced the child identified as a girl, the mum engaged with a local LGBT support group that fast became her only source of social activity. She tried to isolate the child from the father by excluding him from medical appointments and alleging family violence. These claims were not accepted by the court.
She also began having Devin treated at one of Victoria’s infamous gender clinics, purchasing him padded bras and compression underpants to hide his penis and testicles. It was the father’s resistance to the use of puberty blockers that was the instigator for the court proceedings, which ran for more than five years.
Strum had a lot of criticism for the “expert witnesses” from the gender clinic who appeared in support of the mother’s case who, he said, failed to give objective and unbiased opinion. “Advocacy in a court is for lawyers, not witnesses,” he wrote.
He took aim at the guidelines produced by this same clinic and proffered as standard care for gender dysphoric youth.
“Whilst termed, or commonly known as, the “Australian Standards”,” he wrote, “they do not have the approval or imprimatur of the Commonwealth or any State or Territory Government, including any such government Minister for, or Department of, Health.”
The author of the standards—an Associate Professor relied upon by the mother as an expert witness—described them as “best practice.” This was, Strum opined, “essentially tantamount to her agreeing with herself.”
He noted that the child was not assessed, nor treated, for other comorbidities that the doctors had reason to believe were present, including “anxiety; significantly impaired family functioning; disordered eating or relationship with food; possible neurodivergence; and social isolation or limited social supports or interaction.”
He also made it clear that the gender clinic doctors could not refer to a single child who had been referred to the clinic who had not been prescribed puberty blockers.
Strum did not stop at the mother or the gender clinic. He also took time to undo some of the damage that had been done in recent court rulings. Reinstating the principle that was overturned in the UK Bell v Tavistock case, Strum opined that no matter how mature an 11-year-old child was, they could not properly discuss and understand the ramifications of being treated with puberty blockers.
He also disagreed with a 2024 Victorian Supreme Court ruling that puberty blockers were no different to any other childhood medical treatments, such as vaccinations, orthopaedic surgery or chemotherapy and even went as far as saying that in light of all the new evidence of the risks of puberty blockers, the landmark ruling in Re Jamie that removed the requirement of court authorisation for puberty blockers could be reconsidered.
Strum quoted the Cass Report at length and relied on it in his judgment; a wonderful move given that it had previously been dismissed by one of his Federal Circuit and Family Court judicial colleagues as being of “little weight” in determining the best interests of the child.
He also swiftly dismissed any attempt to use Victoria’s conversion practices ban to restrict the ability of medical professionals to decline to provide so-called “gender-affirming care.”
He noted with concern that the ban has resulted in therapists refusing to treat children with gender issues, for fear of falling foul of the law’s apparent ban on anything that does not amount to affirmation. Strum also ruled that the risks of puberty blockers outweigh their potential benefits and are not in the best interests in the child. Importantly, he acknowledged the fact that over 95-98 per cent of kids who are prescribed puberty blockers proceed to cross-sex hormones and so insisted that the risks of “gender affirmation” be treated as a whole.
He listed these as including “risks to fertility, sexual function, bone health, brain development, cardiovascular function and carcinogenesis, as well the risks of being a lifelong medical patient and of later regret” and expressed “considerable concern” that notwithstanding the weight of evidence, the gender clinic “continues to represent to parents and children that puberty blockers are fully reversible and relatively risk-free.”
While each parent was seeking sole parental responsibility for Devin and the right to make medical decisions for him, Strum ultimately gave that responsibility to the father and prohibited either party from consenting to any gender affirming medical treatment on Devin’s behalf.
This was a dramatic and important move and demonstrates how damaging the judge considered the mother’s influence to be.
Interestingly, he noted that the mother would not respond well to the cessation of involvement with the gender clinic, “in which she places her belief and faith.” In doing so, and perhaps unwittingly, he was labelling gender ideology as the destructive cult it is.
Many are hailing this decision as the “beginning of the end” for puberty blockers. I just hope it’s the beginning of a new start for Devin.