Imagine you are a 16 year-old with gender dysphoria, that is, you feel deeply that your body is incongruent with your gender identity. The prospect of developing the adult features of your biological sex fills you with anxiety, fills you with depression.

You want to start cross-sex hormone therapy, which means you’ll begin developing the features of the opposite sex, your true gender. You are certain – after a life of confusion – that you want to live a happy life as a transgender person.

Martin was a child experiencing these feelings. According to his mum he was “born a boy, however through no fault of his own, (was) physically formed in the skin of a girl”. He always had stereotypically male interests like soccer, karate and dinosaurs. He was a tomboy – the only girl wearing pants in the Year 6 school photo.

But at age 12, Martin changed. He became “introverted, a recluse, depressed and dark.” The school counsellor told his mother that Martin “has the feeling of suffocating inside a body [he] does not associate with.” The more feminine his body became, the more Martin withdrew from the world. He cut his hair and wore the clothes of a boy, but he bound his growing breasts every day, so tight that it caused pain and shortness of breath, just so he could fit in to what society sees as “normal”.

He was cutting himself to relieve the pain he felt inside, and then his mother discovered he was researching ways to kill himself. “[He] has the feeling of disgust at the sight of his female anatomy when showering. Getting his period was the final straw on the path to contemplating suicide.

“Our family unit is suffering. When I say goodbye to him every day,” she told a court recently, “I sit hoping he comes home from school. Every day I tread water and counsel his depression, hoping that he can hang on.”

Meanwhile, Martin’s doctors had recognised that his mental health would improve significantly if he started testosterone treatment to masculinise his body and voice as soon as possible. His parents also supported Martin undergoing cross-sex hormone therapy.

Nobody disagreed.

But, under current law, Martin’s parents and doctors had to apply to the family court to authorise the testosterone treatment. Legally, his parents didn’t have authority to consent to it. And his doctors didn’t have authority to determine whether he was competent and mature enough to make the decision for himself.

There are strong arguments against this situation. Forcing young people with gender dysphoria to apply to the family court is extremely stressful and expensive for them and their families. Indeed, there is evidence that some families have forgone the court application (and therefore the treatment) because of its prohibitive cost. Australia is the only country where this kind of application is necessary. And, in most cases, the court will simply follow the doctors’ advice.

How did the law come to this? Since 1992, courts have recognized a special category of medical procedures which have such serious consequences that special rules apply to them. For these procedures, a child’s parents do not have authority to provide consent, and their doctors do not have authority to determine whether they are competent to make the decision themselves. Only a court can do these things.

The family court treats cross-sex hormone therapy as a procedure which falls into this special category. Therefore a court application is a prerequisite.

However, just before Christmas, Justice Victoria Bennett released in the family court a judgement which strongly criticised this approach. That judgment was delivered in Martin’s Case.

I won’t go into the legal details – suffice to say that in Martin’s Case, Justice Bennett argued that hormone therapy for gender dysphoria should never have fallen into the special category of medical procedures in the first place. The treatment is qualitatively different to the other procedures which fall into that class. In other words, the special rules should never have applied.

Martin’s Case does not change the law, because Justice Bennett was a single judge in a lower court. Her comments are merely commentary. But she has done the intellectual hard yards for a higher court – the full family court – to change the law on appeal. She explicitly invited the full family court to do so, and I second that invitation.

Furthermore, in Martin’s Case, Justice Bennett provided legal arguments to complement the arguments that I mentioned earlier. In light of these arguments, federal politicians should step in and change the law as it currently stands.

It should not fall on the shoulders of a family – and a child in distress – to go through the pain and expense of an appeal to the full family court.

If reform occurred, what protections would remain for children? Well, a doctor would still need to determine whether the child is competent to decide for themselves whether to have the procedure (something doctors do every day for other procedures). If the child was not competent, their parents would need to provide consent (again, something parents do all the time). If there was a disagreement between any of these people, they could still apply to the court, which could then make the decision in the best interests of the child.

Martin was due to commence testosterone treatment last week. His journey to finally shed “the skin of a girl” he was born into is now underway.

“I now see a little smile as he gets closer to being allowed to be his ‘true self’,” his mother says.

Hopefully his case might mean that other kids with gender dysphoria, and their families, do not need to go through the stressful rigmarole of applying to the court for something which the child, the parents and the doctors should be able to determine themselves.