PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Mrs McINTOSH (Lindsay) (11:04): Imagine being exhausted all the time, bruising easily, gaining weight and knowing your own body well enough to know that something is not right. You do what all Australians are told to do. You seek medical advice.
You ask questions. You are told that maybe it is menopause, maybe it's stress, maybe it is just part of getting older—but something still does not feel right. That was Jenny Piper.
For years, Jenny knew something was wrong. Jenny had Cushing's syndrome. A scan in 2022 showed a three-centimetre growth on her adrenal gland.
It was missed. By the time it was properly investigated, it had grown to seven centimetres and it was cancerous. Jenny died in June.
She was just 60 years old. As a woman, I find Jenny's story frightening. I cannot hear it without asking how many times does a woman have to say, 'Something is wrong,' before somebody listens?
To me, that is at the heart of this debate. Too many women know what it feels like to have pain dismissed, to have symptoms minimised and to be told that perhaps it's stress, perhaps it's hormones, perhaps it's menopause. Sometimes, those explanations will be right, but sometimes they will not.
When they are not, the consequences of missing the next question can be enormous. It's not about blaming doctors; our doctors, nurses and health professionals do extraordinary work every single day. It is about asking whether our health system is always giving women the opportunity to be heard and whether we are investigating early enough when something simply just does not add up.
Recent polling found only one in seven young women say their GP always takes their health concerns seriously. The Albanese government's own #EndGenderBias survey found that, of the women who responded, two-thirds reported experiencing gender bias or discrimination in health care and more than 70 per cent reported it in diagnosis and treatment. Those figures should concern every member of parliament not because it gives us another political label but because behind every percentage is a woman sitting in a consulting room, asking, 'Can somebody please tell me what is happening to me?' There should be no division in this House about doing better.
The coalition also have a strong record on women's health. We invested more than $353 million, we launched the National Women's Health Strategy and we made the first investment into endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics. And where this government gets women's health policy right, we should acknowledge it.
The new menopause and perimenopause Medicare items are welcome; cheaper contraceptives are welcome; additional PBS medicines are welcome. Good policy should be supported regardless of what side of politics does it. But governments also need to be prepared to ask: where are we still going wrong?
Funding alone cannot solve all the problems. Sometimes a problem is not the absence of another program; sometimes it's where we have looked at women's health too narrowly. For too long, we have talked about women's health.
The conversation has too often begun and ended with reproductive health. Of course, reproductive health matters enormously but women are more than just their reproductive system. We need to treat the whole woman—her heart, her brain, her bones, her mental health, her pain, her safety, her life.
Australia's first inquiry into women's pain heard from more than 13,000 women, girls, carers and health professionals. Among women experiencing pain, 90 per cent had lived with it for more than a year. More than half experience pain every single day: while they're going to work, they're raising their kids, they're caring for ageing parents, they're running businesses, they're studying, they're looking after their families and they're getting on with their life.
Generations of women have been remarkably good at just getting on with life—sometimes too good. They don't want to make a fuss. They put up with it.
They get told it's normal, but we need to change that thinking. We need to stop asking women to live with pain and start asking why they are in pain. That's not radical; it's common sense.
Endometriosis affects around one in seven Australian women and girls and yet diagnosis can still take years. We can do better. We must do better.
One of the key parts of this is going back to why what happened to Jenny happened and what cannot change. We've got to change it. We can decide what we learn from her story.
The next woman who walks into a consulting room and says, 'Something isn't right'—we can learn from that. Those words should matter, they should be heard and they should be taken seriously. Where the obvious explanation does not fit, somebody should be prepared to look again—earlier diagnosis, better access, better outcomes and recognising that women's health means caring for the whole woman.
Jenny Piper knew something was wrong. She deserved to be heard sooner and every Australian woman deserves to be heard.