A Queensland Liberal National party official sent an election-eve email to branch members – on party letterhead – claiming that the state had been “captured by transgender ideology”. The email also promoted plans to ban puberty blockers for minors.
The state opposition has repeatedly refused to answer questions about the email, obtained by Guardian Australia, amid growing pressure for the LNP leader, David Crisafulli, to clarify the party’s intentions on abortion, voluntary assisted dying and gender issues.
On Wednesday Crisafulli would not say whether he would personally support a foreshadowed crossbench bill to restrict, or possibly re-criminalise, abortion.
Concerns were growing within the LNP that social issues were harming the party’s ambitions to make gains in progressive city electorates in the state election on 26 October.
Earlier this year the Christian right faction took control of the LNP’s Griffith FDC – a large party branch in the Greens-held South Brisbane electorate. The veteran anti-abortion activist Alan Baker was elected its chair.
Guardian Australia has obtained an email from Baker, sent on party letterhead, to members promoting a speech by Jillian Spencer, a former public hospital psychiatrist who made allegations about the state’s children’s gender service. An independent investigation found “no evidence” to support claims children were hurried or coerced into decisions, and recommended an increase in staff levels to meet demand.
“Labor governments in Queensland and other Australian states and territories have been captured by transgender ideology and are yet to catch up to the science,” Baker wrote.
He also sent – highlighted in bold – a reference to the LNP’s organisational wing policy on the issue, passed at the state convention in 2024, which calls on the next LNP government to “ban puberty blockers to minors with gender dysphoria”.
Crisafulli’s office did not respond to questions about the email, sent in September, including requests to outline his policies in relation to transgender rights.
Questions sent to the LNP on Wednesday also received no response.
Asked at the start of the campaign whether the LNP would commit to increasing staffing for the children’s gender service, in line with the review recommendation, the opposition health spokesperson, Ros Bates, said the party had yet to come to a position.
“They’re not the things that Queenslanders are asking me about, whilst I understand it’s important,” she said. “It is not what people are asking us right now.”
Crisafulli has long-promised that he would not seek to repeal or change Queensland’s abortion laws if the LNP is elected, and that it was not among the party’s core priorities.
But his hand could be forced by the crossbencher Robbie Katter, who has promised to bring on a private member’s bill to alter Labor’s abortion laws, and even hinted he could push for a “clean repeal” which would re-establish a criminal offence.
“All I could say is, everything will be on the table because we’re very serious about our position on this,” Katter told Guardian Australia on Wednesday.
“It would be a counterpoint to everything that’s gone into the parliament. So we would be looking to wind back as much as we could.”
Crisafulli was repeatedly asked about the issue on Wednesday but would not say whether he would grant his MPs a conscience vote. Much of the concern – dubbed by some a “scare campaign” – about the prospect of changes to abortion laws under an LNP government surrounds long-held personal views of many opposition MPs and LNP candidates.
They include the former federal senator Amanda Stoker, who said in 2018 that Labor’s Queensland laws were “repugnant” and “barbarism [with] the cloak of civility”.
Two MPs – Jon Krause and the retiring rightwinger Mark Robinson – have made public comments suggesting reforms could occur after the election.
Guardian Australia revealed on Wednesday that Robinson told a Christian podcast in August there “are no doubt corrections that will happen over time”.
