STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

Ms FRANCE (Dickson) (13:53): A friend once described women's health as the 'gender, pain, agony and hot flushes gap', because, for years and years, she was told her endo and menopause symptoms were 'normal' and 'just part of being a woman'. Before Labor was elected and before our historic $800 million women's health package, women were paying at least $1,000 a year for menopause treatment, had no access to affordable endometriosis medicines and hadn't had a new pill put on the PBS for 30 years.

Labor changed that, and now more than one million Aussie women have access to cheaper medicines for contraception, endometriosis and menopause—women like Susan, who lives in my electorate of Dickson. Before Labor listed her hormone replacement therapy on the PBS, Susan was paying around $120 every month for an Estrogel pack. Today she pays just $25 every two months for the same prescription.

What cost her more than $1,200 now costs only $150 a year. She wrote to me in disbelief and said that, while everything else feels like it's going up, it was lovely to see the cost of this vital treatment going down. She was so grateful.

For too long, women's health concerns have been overlooked, underfunded and ignored. This Women's Health Week. I celebrate Labor's record health package.