QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Senator GALLAGHER (Australian Capital Territory—Minister for Finance, Minister for the Public Service, Minister for Women, Minister for Government Services and Manager of Government Business in the Senate) (14:55): I thank Senator Grogan for this question and for her advocacy for women in Australia and, particularly, in relation to Labor's very strong women's health package that we took to the last election.

It is really important that women's health needs are addressed. Sadly, this is an area that has not been addressed in a timely fashion, and, when we came to government, a lot of work was done under the former assistant minister, Minister Kearney, through the Women's Health Advisory Council and other consultations to go and really identify those areas where we needed to improve in the offering of not only MBS items but also PBS items.

It was very clear from that work that it had been too long for affordable contraception improvements to be listed on the PBS. It's hard to get your head around the fact that a new, modern oral contraceptive pill hadn't been put on the PBS for 30 years and that women were paying out of their own pockets for access to these improvements in contraceptive medications.

Well, we are changing that. Again, we've got a new listing that has just been provided. From 1 November, again, really important changes are being put in place to make sure that women not only have more choice but bear lower costs and have better support.

Even in areas like long-term contraceptives—IUDs and other birth control implants—Medicare payments are recognising those. We're looking at ways to invest in staff to ensure better training so that we're getting women using those types of contraception at levels that we see in other countries. Again, this hasn't been the case because women's health, under the former government, was not addressed as it should have been with improvements to the MBS or the PBS.

The PRESIDENT: Senator Grogan, first supplementary?