The National Health and Medical Research Council is drafting new guidelines in response to a shift in community sentiment regarding IVF, which has seen many couples travel overseas to pursue fertility options not available in Australia.

It has opened its consultation draft to public comment and is specifically seeking feedback on sex selection for non-medical purposes, compensating women for the effort and risks associated with donating their eggs and the establishment of an Australian egg donor bank.

The NHMRC's Australian Health Ethics Committee chair Ian Olver​ said it was already possible for people to choose the sex of their babies when there was a risk of genetic abnormalities and it was time to question whether it should be allowed for non-medical reasons such as family balancing.

"There are obviously ethical guidelines that can't be moved by public sentiment, but there are sometimes boundaries within guidelines that will shift with public sentiment," Professor Olver said.

"If we see a lot of people going offshore for something – whether it be surrogacy or whether it be sex selection – we begin to detect that there's a change in people's minds."

Gender selection was commonly available in Australian IVF clinics until the NHMRC came out against the practice in its 2005 ethical guidelines.

A 2013 Roy Morgan poll found only one in five Australians supported gender selection.

But Monash University professor and fertility specialist Gab Kovacs said it should be available, saying few parents would pursue it due to the onerous process and the expense.

Most of his patients who wanted to do sex selection had only boys and wanted a girl.

"It's not something that should be encouraged, but I think if someone's prepared to do it and they're prepared to pay for it, I don't see what harm it would do to the community," Professor Kovacs said.

Genea IVF director Robert Woolcott said there was an ethical conflict in IVF clinics not telling parents the gender of their embryos when the information was held by the clinic.

"The parents have a powerful right to know," Dr Woolcott said.

The controversy over baby Gammy, who was born in Thailand to a surrogate mother and then abandoned by his Australian parents when they found out he had Down syndrome, triggered a discussion about whether Australian women should be financially compensated for donating their eggs, to create a bigger local stock and reduce the incentive to go overseas.

UTS fertility law specialist Jenni Millbank said the UK's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority had come to a sensible position in recognising that donating eggs was a much more complicated process than donating sperm and women should be compensated accordingly.

"I actually think there's been a shift in attitudes over the last five years," Professor Millbank said.

"People are thinking more carefully about what role money may play."

Professor Millbank, who is recruiting for a study on people who have gone overseas for fertility reasons, said the techniques used internationally, such as multiple embryo transfers and hyper ovarian stimulation, left women feeling mixed about the experience.

"People don't think about these things because they just want their baby but later down the track when their baby is born prematurely or they hyper-stimulate they think maybe I shouldn't have done that."