Family First Upper House candidate Jane Foreman has called on Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan to apologise to parents of children experiencing gender distress for promoting false and misleading suicide statistics to advance radical LGBTQ political ideology.
Ms Foreman said the Premier’s decision to reshare a press conference clip—without correcting her own misstatement—while promoting her attendance at the radical LGBTQ+ Midsumma Festival was irresponsible and deeply hurtful to families seeking honest, evidence-based care for their children.
“Parents deserve truth, not fake information invented by political activists,” Ms Foreman said. “Conflating suicide attempts with suicide deaths is not a trivial error. It weaponises parental anxiety and pressures families into a contested treatment pathway by implying catastrophic outcomes if they ask questions.”
Ms Foreman noted that the Victorian Government itself later conceded the Premier had misquoted the statistic, yet the reposted video omitted that clarification. She said authoritative national datasets do not currently report suicide deaths by LGBTQ+ status, making definitive claims about fatal suicide rates impossible.
“Using disputed figures from political activists to shut down debate is dishonest and unbecoming of a Premier,” Ms Foreman said. “It is wrong to portray concerned parents and journalists as ‘deeply irresponsible’ while repeating claims that have been publicly de-bunked by experts.”
Ms Foreman said families of gender-distressed children repeatedly report being confronted with emotionally coercive slogans—such as ‘affirm or your child will die’—despite the lack of reliable mortality data to support such claims.
“Parents need careful assessment, watchful waiting where appropriate, and genuine informed consent—not political grandstanding,” she said.
Family First is calling on Premier Allan to apologise to parents, correct the public record, and commit to evidence-based policy that allows open discussion without intimidation.
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