Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to the member for Gorton for that question and for joining us and so many other female colleagues in the Labor Party this morning to celebrate Women's Health Week. Others who joined were Assistant Minister White, who has responsibility for delivering the government's women's health agenda; Assistant Minister Kearney, who crafted that agenda; and the wonderful Robyn Smith, a terrific and powerful advocate for better women's health, who told her powerful story of going through menopause early in life after removing her ovaries and fallopian tubes to protect against a very high risk that she has of inherited cancer. This was a group of women channelling the voices of literally millions of Australian women, who remind us that you cannot be serious about strengthening Medicare without being serious about strengthening women's health.

Women consume about 60 per cent of health services in this country—often not because they're sick but just because they are women managing their own and, by extension, their family's reproductive health and planning or because they're going through menopause and perimenopause. The truth is that, for decades, Australia's women had not been getting the support that they deserved and that they needed. There had not been a new oral contraceptive pill put onto the PBS for more than 30 years, not a new medicine for endometriosis for more than 30 years and not a new menopausal hormone treatment for more than 20 years, forcing Australia's women to pay top dollar for the best medicines available on the market.

We've changed that. In this past year, we've listed three cutting-edge oral contraceptive pills, three cutting-edge menopausal hormone treatments and two cutting-edge medicines to treat endometriosis, saving women millions and millions of dollars they shouldn't have been paying in the first place. Already, I'm pleased to report that, since those listings, 365,000 Australian women have accessed more than 700,000 cheaper scripts as a direct result of the decisions that we took. On 1 July, as part of our package, we also introduced a new, longer, much better funded GP consult service to support women going through menopause and perimenopause to ensure that women, at that point in their life, get the best possible information, advice and support, which, frankly, had not been happening enough in years gone by. Already, I'm really pleased to report that in just nine weeks more than 20,000 Australian women have taken up that new opportunity. There are many more measures to take effect from our women's health package later this year, but already our determination to strengthen women's health is making a real difference.

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