Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Women's health is about the big things. It's about philosophy and how this government views the importance of women's health. I'm very proud to be a member of the Labor Party and in particular very proud, after working for half a century in health care, to be a member of a government that understands the importance of women's health across the whole spectrum of health care in Australia.

Our $800 million Women's Health Package, announced in the last budget, is driving more choice, lower costs and better care for women and girls across the country. We're already seeing better outcomes. We're already seeing an understanding that women's health is very important in family health. I myself have been an advocate for many years of first-thousand-days policy that looks at children's health from preconception through their first two years of life, and Labor's changes to women's health care will make a huge difference in the first thousand days for children in Australia.

Since introducing the Women's Health Package, more than 700,000 women have accessed over 2.3 million cheaper PBS prescriptions for contraceptives, menopausal hormone therapies and endometriosis treatments. This is really important when you couple this with our 60-day prescribing policies, which were opposed tooth and nail by the coalition. This is a dramatic difference to women's health care in Australia. I'm very proud of it and very proud that we have a health minister who has pushed this policy for the last almost 10 years. It is fantastic news.

We have new contraceptive pills listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme—the first in almost 30 years. These are two better contraceptive options, helping over 300,000 women save more than $26 million on 660,000 scripts. We have new menopausal hormone therapies listed where we've had none for 20 years. This supports hundreds of thousands of women and saves them over $50 million across almost two million scripts. Seven-thousand women with endometriosis are accessing over 30,000 cheaper scripts, saving almost $6 million on treatment that previously put major financial pressure on women with endometriosis.

We're getting earlier, more affordable IVF treatments for women, with almost 50,000 people getting lower-cost IVF fertility treatment. Since January 2026, PBS scripts are now just $25 and $7.70 for concession cardholders. These are the lowest medicine prices in over 20 years, giving Australian women more cost-of-living relief and better access to health care that they may not have had otherwise.

We also have made major advances in access to genomics and genetics treatments and tests for women who may have had health problems, particularly some of the inherited cancers. This is a dramatic improvement for women with major illness. We're delivering new pelvic pain clinics again. That makes a huge difference to women and their families. We're having over 30 endometriosis clinics open up, providing better, more timely and cheaper treatment for people who have endometriosis, like my daughter Amelia. We're providing additional funding to expand services to provide perimenopause and menopause care, something that was needed here for many, many years but didn't happen under the coalition government. This year, the government will launch Australia's first national awareness campaign for menopause and perimenopause, finally giving women the information and recognition they have deserved for decades and decades. This is historic. This is historic women's health care delivered for people in ways that they can access both geographically and financially.

We have now also provided treatment for uncomplicated UTIs directly from pharmacies, repeat prescriptions for the contraceptive pill from pharmacies and more affordable access to fertility treatments, as I've mentioned. We are delivering reform for women's health care that had been denied for far too long. We have the women's expert panel for cardiovascular health now being set up by Rebecca White, the Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care and Assistant Minister for Women. These are dramatic changes done on a philosophical basis that proves that women's health is very important to this government.

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