Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's Women's Health Week, and, this morning, I joined the new Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care at Sexual Health and Family Planning ACT, a critical service for our community here in Canberra, to discuss the Albanese Labor government's announcement of more training for practitioners for the placement and removal of IUDs and birth-control implants. This free training boost will make long-acting contraceptives more widely accessible on top of our previous commitment to make them more affordable. For far too long, women's health has been underfunded, underresearched and undervalued. Now, the Albanese Labor government has invested a massive $729.9 million into women's health to ensure that women have more choice and better outcomes for their reproductive health. I also want to acknowledge the former assistant minister for women's health, Ged Kearney, for her work in this area. We have put the first new contraceptive pills on the PBS for the first time in 30 years. We will open more pelvic pain clinics around the country, and we are training nurses to help support women through the non-optional hormonal changes of perimenopause and menopause. And now, from 1 January, PBS scripts will cost no more than $25. They have not been that low since 2004.

Labor is the party of Medicare, and we will always strengthen it, including for Australian women, because women's health is central to gender equality and gender equality is essential to the Albanese Labor government's agenda.