Press Council Says Aussie Columnist’s Piece On Gay Conversion Ban, Gender Clinics Inaccurate

Australian columnist and Safe Schools opponent Dr. Kevin Donnelly’s newspaper column on Victoria’s anti-gay conversion practices ban and gender clinic has been called out over inaccurate and misleading statements. 

In a recent decision, the Australian Press Council determined that Donnelly’s opinion piece published in the NT New and Cairns Post on September 3, 2022, titled “Woke world is wobbling,” breached several standards of journalistic practice. 

Following multiple complaints, the Press Council investigated the matter. 

Misleading Claims

In the column, Donnelly, a Senior Fellow at the Australian Catholic University’s PM Glynn Institute, made claims about the Tavistock gender fluidity clinic in Britain, the Safe Schools program in Australia, and Victorian legislation banning gay conversion practices.

The article claimed that the Tavistock clinic was closed due to an inquiry’s conclusion that allowing confused and immature children to transition to another gender put them “at considerable risk.” 

However, the Press Council did not find any substantial evidence in the material cited by the publication to support this statement. Instead, it referred to a BBC article, which stated that the closure was attributed to concerns about the clinic’s care model, not the act of gender transition itself.  The British government had announced the closure of Tavistock Clinic in favour of more regional centres, to provide better care to trans and gender diverse persons. 

Donnelly then claimed: “Over the past 10 years the Safe Schools program has told students Australian society is guilty of homophobia, transphobia and heteronormativity and the way to achieve sexual freedom is to embrace what Roz Ward describes as a world where ‘bodies can blossom in extraordinary, new and amazing ways that we can only try to imagine today’”. 

 The Press Council found no basis for this claim in the program’s material or the public comments of its co-designer. The Council concluded that the columnist’s comments on this matter were not supported by the information available.

Opinion Pieces Must Have Factual Material

The columnist took aim at Victoria’s anti-gay conversion practices law, which has been described as “world-leading legislation” by survivors. 

Donnelly, not surprisingly, did not agree. “Even worse, notwithstanding events surrounding Tavistock, in Victoria Chairman Dan has legislated to stop parents, priests and health professionals from counselling young people about the dangers and harmful consequences of taking puberty blockers,” he insisted. 

The Council noted that the publication failed to specify the aspects of the legislation that contained such a prohibition and found no substantiating evidence in the cited material.

While the Council acknowledged the article as an opinion piece and respected the importance of freedom of expression, it emphasised that even in such pieces, factual material must be accurate and not misleading, and opinions should not be based on significantly inaccurate factual material or the omission of key facts.