PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Ms RYAN (Lalor—Chief Government Whip) (11:09): It's an absolute pleasure to second the motion from the member for Dickson around women's health and to support the contribution made by the shadow minister just then. It's nice to be in the chamber where we all agree. We all agree not just because we're women but because we're intelligent human beings and we understand when there's been an injustice, and in women's health there has clearly been an injustice.
That injustice has come from science. That injustice has come from the fact that women were not part of medical research for a long time, excluded on the grounds that we were hormonally inconsistent. Obviously, as part of being women, that's our state of affairs.
I want to put this question to the chamber and beyond the chamber, for those listening at home. Have you read the symptoms for a heart attack as they present in a woman? Have you read the symptoms for ovarian cancer as they present in a woman?
Well, the strange thing about both of those diseases, as they present in a woman, is that it could be any woman on any given day and any part of the day. The symptoms for ovarian cancer read like the symptoms of a period. They read like the symptoms of menopause.
The symptoms for a heart attack in a woman can similarly read as if it's part of our reproductive system responding to things, rather than our heart. This is the fundamental problem that we've had: a lack of women being represented in research and then a lack of pinpoint accuracy around the symptoms or how we could preclude general, everyday symptoms for women that are about our hormonal inconsistency—or our hormones, full stop—and how that might differ from any other given day for a woman, to assist us.
Most importantly, as the shadow minister put it, we need people to take women seriously when they say they're in pain or when they say something feels different than yesterday or the day before or last week or last year. We need what this government is delivering right now, and that is a real focus on the women's health package. I'm thrilled to hear the support from the other side for this work—absolutely thrilled.
One of the things I want to make clear in this place is that, when I put a post up in my community about the fact that we were going to get a menopause clinic, a pain clinic and an endometriosis clinic in my community, the number of men who joined in that conversation online and tagged a sister, a cousin or a partner was extraordinary. This is now real, on the ground.
We've broken through a barrier where the young men in my community are concerned about their partner missing work. They're concerned about what this means for the future. They're concerned about when they might be able to start their family.
This is no longer just a conversation for women. In my community, this is a conversation for young families, and they are absolutely appreciative of the work that's being done—the work that's been started in this place across the last 15 years, I'm going to say—and how it continues. The fact of the matter is that, since the announcement of this landmark $800 million women's package, more than one million women have filled over four million cheaper prescriptions for contraceptives, menopause therapies and endometriosis treatments, delivering more than $150 million in savings.
More than 11,000 women with endometriosis have accessed PBS-supported treatments. That's 11,000 women who've been listened to who potentially weren't being listened to. More than 137,000 women have undertaken Medicare-supported menopause health assessments.
This is extraordinary. This is changing lives on the ground every day, changing families' lives and changing the community. Women now have access to the first new PBS-listed contraceptive pills in more than 30 years and the first new PBS-listed menopausal hormone therapies in more than 20 years.
To put that in perspective, I'm a long time into this journey, but I can tell you that I was on the same contraceptive pill for over 20 years, and at my age—I was young when I went on it—I was putting extreme hormones into my body when that wasn't necessary. Now that's changed, and now we have new ones on the PBS, so young women aren't going to be on those levels of hormonal interventions.
They'll be on sensible levels of hormonal interventions. I welcome the Albanese Labor government's focus on this. I welcome our continued focus on this.
The better for women, the better for our communities and the better for everybody.