PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Ms PENFOLD (Lyne) (11:24): I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion, because improving the health of Australian women and girls should be something that unites this parliament. I acknowledge the measures outlined in this motion. Cheaper contraception, better access to menopause treatment—thank you very much—support for women undergoing IVF, and better treatment for endometriosis and pelvic pain are good things.
When government delivers something that genuinely improves women's health, I'll acknowledge it. But I cannot support the rewriting of history implicit in this motion: the suggestion that women's health was ignored until this Labor government arrived. Women's health policy did not begin in 2022.
The former coalition government established Australia's first national action plan for endometriosis in 2018, and the coalition developed the National Women's Health Strategy 2020 to 2030, the very national strategy that continues to guide women's health policy today. In the 2021-22 budget alone, the former coalition government committed more than $350 million to women's health, including breast and cervical cancer screening, reproductive health and endometriosis.
Successive governments have built on the work of those before them. That is how good health policy should work. But there is another problem with this motion: it congratulates the Albanese government for listening to women.
I represent thousands of regional women who are still waiting to be heard. And, if this Albanese government were really listening to women, this parliament would also be debating my Sex Discrimination Amendment (Sex-based Rights) Bill 2026. We would be voting on restoring clear sex based rights in Commonwealth law and a biological definition of woman and man.
Labor cannot pick and choose when it listens to women. It cannot congratulate itself for listening to women on health while refusing even to allow a parliamentary debate on the concerns of thousands of Australian women about their sex based rights. Right now, we have a woman, Sall Grover, who feels she cannot live in this country because the government has turned a blind eye, because this government stands idly by while the rights of women and girls are being actively diminished.
Listening means listening even when the issue is difficult. It means allowing the parliament to do its job. Listening also means understanding that access to health care looks very different outside of capital cities.
Healthy North Coast says plainly that, for women living in regional and rural communities, accessing the right care can mean travelling long distances, waiting for specialist services and navigating different parts of the health system. So let us look at the 33 endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics celebrated in this motion. There's not one in my electorate of Lyne—not one in Taree, Forster-Tuncurry, the Manning Valley, Gloucester, Dungog or Wauchope.
A woman in my electorate experiencing debilitating pelvic pain does not care very much about the number of ministerial press releases if the service is hours away from her, and that is the broader story of health in Lyne. At Manning Base Hospital, the emergency department dealt with more than 17,000 triage category 4 and 5 presentations in the 12 months to September last year, and I've repeatedly asked the federal Labor government for a Medicare Urgent Care Clinic in Taree.
There are open clinics elsewhere. Some communities are even getting their second or third, but Taree still has none. At a state level, the Minns Labor government has shelved the proposed public hospital for Forster-Tuncurry.
The community has been promised an urgent care clinic there as well by the state government, but people are still waiting. This is an electorate with an older population, substantial socioeconomic disadvantage and communities spread across enormous distances. Women in regional Australia should not receive a lesser standard of health care because of their postcode.
I welcome cheaper medicines, I welcome menopause assessments, I welcome investment in endometriosis and I welcome every measure that gives Australian women better care. But I will not congratulate governments for simply announcing programs while regional women continue to fall through the gaps. Women's health has been advanced by successive governments.
The challenge now is to make sure that where a woman lives does not determine the care she receives and that, when a government says it is listening to women, it listens to them across a full range of issues that affect their lives. For the women and girls of Lyne, that means better access to GPs and specialists, proper mental health services, an urgent care clinic in Taree, delivery of promised services in Forster-Tuncurry and a health system that recognises that regional women deserve the same access to care as women anywhere else in Australia.
That is the test I'll apply to this government—not how many announcements it makes, but whether it actually listens and whether the women I represent can get the healthcare rights and respect they deserve.