Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm really proud to be part of a government that is delivering more choice, lower costs and better care for Australian women. I think this delivery is demonstrative of what happens when you have women at the table making decisions and a government that represents the communities we come from—with over 50 per cent of the population being women across Australia.

This is a really important issue for my community. We've held forums and conducted surveys around women's health in the last term of government. I was stunned at the volume of responses that people shared, and I was so grateful for the generosity of the stories that were told about people's personal experiences. It made me even more determined to advocate, alongside my colleagues in government, for better treatment for women.

I've met with a number of women's health researchers over the years, and I am so encouraged and inspired by the work they do every day with their colleagues to encourage people to better listen to women and to help our communities be healthier and stronger.

The reality is that it has been for too long that women have not been listened to and their health issues not taken seriously. I remember studying 19th century history and feeling so shocked at the brutal way the scientific and medical communities treated women at that stage. Unfortunately, there have been so many examples of women not being listened to and being treated poorly in our own times. I'm glad that, after hundreds of years—a period that would have extended to well before the Victorian era—women are now starting to be listened to and taken seriously by the scientific and medical community and, of course, by governments.

Like so many women in this place and in our communities, I have my own experiences of this. A number of years ago, I presented multiple times to an emergency department in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. I was given many blood tests. It was really clear that something was wrong. All that could be suggested—after I'd been turned away many times but the medical professionals also realised that something needed to be done—was that my appendix should be removed. My appendix was perfectly healthy. I did not have appendicitis. But they eventually found out what it was, which was great of them. It was an incredibly common condition that affects around two in three women between the ages of 30 and 50.

I hope that, through our investment and through the advocacy of so many in our communities and in the research community, more is done to educate doctors on women's health, in particular, and on the importance of listening to women. It shouldn't be the case that people are subjected to unnecessary surgery, which has its own risks, in this day and age because there is perhaps a gap in knowledge in relation to women's health.

But I'm really pleased to be talking about a much happier outcome for women's health today, which is that hundreds of thousands of women are now able to access cheaper medicines and better health care due to our landmark women's health package. I thank everyone—Assistant Minister Kearney in the previous parliament, Assistant Minister White in this parliament and Minister Mark Butler—for their work in delivering this package.

Since announcing our women's health package earlier this year, more than 365,000 women have accessed more than 715,000 cheaper scripts for new oral contraceptives, menopausal hormone therapies and endometriosis treatments listed on the PBS. Before the listings of Yaz, Yasmin and Slinda on the PBS, women were paying $380 per year for their contraception. Now they're paying less than half—$126.40 or just $30.80 a year with a concession card. Before the listings of Estrogel and Prometrium on the PBS, women might have paid up to $670 a year. They are now only paying $31.60 per script or $7.70 if they are a concession card holder. Over 20,000 women have undergone a menopause health assessment, covered by Medicare, since they became available on 1 July.

We can see here that women's health is actually quite expensive, and so we're making it easier and cheaper for women to get access to the health care that they need. We're going to continue to strengthen Medicare for women. From 1 July this year, further MBS changes will take effect, giving women access to affordable IUDs and birth-control implants.

From the forums and the surveys that I conducted in my electorate, there were so many heartbreaking stories of women not getting the help that they needed, not being listened to, and having to go back and forth to doctors for years and years without establishing a diagnosis. For some conditions, the average period of medical consultation before a diagnosis has been a decade. That's a very long time to be struggling and suffering with a health condition. It is really hard. I'm really proud to be part of a government, though, that is working to improve women's health outcomes by listening to women and by addressing systemic bias in the health system. Assistant Minister Kearney outlined that very well in her contribution.

We know that right across the country delayed diagnoses for conditions from endometriosis to heart disease—which does sometimes present differently in women—have taken place. Women have had their pain dismissed, and they really do struggle to get support for issues like menopause and miscarriage. A very common issue that women experience is polycystic ovary syndrome. It does not even involve cysts on ovaries, yet the very poor understanding of this condition in the health system has meant that women have not been diagnosed properly—in fact, the condition has been named incorrectly—and that their health systems and their endocrinology have not been understood well enough. I'm really pleased that there are researchers in my part of the world, in Melbourne, who have been working hard on not just the local or national stage but the international stage to help address this and find not just a more appropriate name for the condition but also a greater understanding and treatment for the condition. This will mean that people don't have to have the delayed diagnoses that we've seen over time.

Of course, all healthcare interventions that our government has made will benefit women, beyond our specific package, such as our commitment to strengthen Medicare and to make medicines cheaper. We're making sure there are more doctors, more urgent care clinics and even cheaper medicines for all Australians. We're making the largest investment in Medicare since its creation over 40 years ago. We're investing $8.5 billion to a deliver an additional 18 million bulk-billed GP visits each year. We're delivering hundreds of nursing scholarships and thousands more doctors in the largest GP training program ever. We're investing in a way that will mean nine out of 10 GP visits will be bulk-billed by 2030. We expect this investment of expanding the bulk-billing incentive to boost the number of fully bulk-billed practices to around 4,800 nationally, which is triple the current number of practices.

We're building more urgent care clinics. I am very proud to have advocated successfully for an urgent care clinic in Mount Waverley, and we're going to get an additional urgent care clinic in the Stonnington council area too. I have heard from so many people in my community how valuable the urgent care clinics have been. They provide bulk-billed care for urgent but non-life-threatening conditions seven days a week for extended hours, with no appointment needed. We've now opened 90 Medicare urgent care clinics across the country, which has meant more than 1.8 million Australians have been able to receive treatment in those facilities. They're taking pressure off hospitals, which means hospitals can spend more time on the life-threatening emergencies they are built for. We committed at the last election to 50 new Medicare urgent care clinics, with more clinics in every state and territory. Once all of the clinics are open, four in five Australians will live within a 20-minute drive of a Medicare urgent care clinic. In Victoria we know there have been more than 393 presentations.

This is a really important investment for our communities. We have made medicines cheaper overall. We are making sure that PBS medicines are going to be no more than $25, which is what they were more than 20 years ago. We're committed to health, we're committed to cost-of-living relief and we are particularly committed to making sure that we listen to women.

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