Tasmania's commissioner for children, Paul Mason, and the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute have embarked on what they say is the largest review into the legalities of male circumcision in Australia's history.

Mr Mason said a critical issue for any non-therapeutic circumcision was whether parental consent was sufficient to protect a surgeon from legal action if the child's genital autonomy was thought to have been infringed.

''The only thing that protects a doctor from an action for assault or a civil prosecution is the valid consent of the patient,'' he said.

''The law is getting pretty hazy about whether a parent can give a valid consent for a child's non-medical procedure.'' Mr Mason said about 90 per cent of Australian male babies were circumcised in the 1970s, dropping to about 2 per cent now.

Its infrequency nowadays only heightened the chance of a circumcised boy feeling aggrieved as an adult that his rights were ignored as a child, he said.

But High Court rulings and United Nations conventions on the rights of parents and children and legal consent in terms of bodily integrity argue against parental-consent circumcision, he said.

''To me they suggest parents are not entitled to cut or wound their children unless it is for a medical purpose,'' he said.

Mr Mason said another grey legal area was that many jurisdictions outlawed female genital alteration, not just the most severe form, because it infringed on girls' rights.

''But we have a situation where girls have legal protection from any surgery on their genitals but parents can go around willy-nilly chopping up bits of their boys.

''That is a discrimination any way you look at it,'' he said.

University of Tasmania circumcision law researcher Warwick Marshall is working closely with Mr Mason and the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute.

Mr Marshall said criminal and civil laws failed to provide adequate certainty for parents and doctors.

''The crux of the uncertainty is whether the consent of the parent of the child being circumcised provides the circumciser with protection from criminal and civil actions which may be brought against them for performing a circumcision,'' he said.

Public submissions to the law reform review close on August 28. AAP