I move:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges the Government is delivering real change for women's and girls' health;

(2) notes that for too long, women's health was not taken seriously however, the Government is changing that and has:

(a) added new contraceptives to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme for the first time in decades, alongside new endometriosis and menopause medicines, cutting costs for the more than one million women who have accessed them so far;

(b) opened 33 Endometriosis and Pelvic Pain Clinics across the country and expanded them to provide menopause and perimenopause care;

(c) added menopause health assessments to Medicare, with more than 137,000 women already accessing one;

(d) been supporting women to undergo in vitro fertilisation earlier and access more affordable fertility treatment; and

(e) made the intrauterine device, the contraceptive implant, and other long-term contraceptives cheaper; and

(3) commends the Government for listening to women and girls in Australia and delivering the change they have been asking for.

I don't think anyone in this place would be surprised to know that I am in my menopause era. I am appropriately frank and literally disinterested in your drama. At the ripe old age of 53, I've now experienced 40 years of periods, period pain, period products, contraception, pregnancy, childbirth, the impacts of childbirth and now menopause. I've also experienced the real costs of all of those things, not just the physical costs of symptoms and pain being dismissed or ignored by health professionals but the financial cost. The cost of being a woman over a lifetime in Australia is anywhere between $35,000 and over $100,000. Period products alone cost up to $19,000. For decades, the extra cost that women pay for being female has never been recognised—until now; until the Albanese Labor government's $800 million landmark women's health package.

If you're a gen X-er like me, you might remember going to the GP in the nineties with terrible and chronic period pain and getting told, 'Perhaps try a hot water bottle,' or, 'You'll get used to it.' I had never heard of endometriosis. Nobody I know in my 20s was ever diagnosed with it. How many of us went to the GP with terrible symptoms as a result of the pill—weight gain, mood swings, depression—and got told, 'Well, it's the pill or pregnancy; that's literally the choice'? Better, new, more sensitive contraception was for those with money, out of reach for most young women. Well, that was until the Albanese Labor government was elected. New pills had not been added to the PBS in 30 years. Yaz, Yasmin and Slinda have now been added to the PBS, saving women about $260 a year or $25 for a three-month supply.

Women are also now able to better access IUDs and implants, which last up to seven years, because we've slashed out-of-pocket costs to have them inserted, saving about $400 up-front. Endometriosis medication is now on the PBS, now $25 a script. Menopause medication is also now on the PBS—alleluia!—saving women thousands. I am saving about $1,000 a year on my Oestrogel pack. So is Susan, who lives at Mount Glorious in my electorate of Dickson. Susan wrote to me telling me how grateful she was to be paying less for her menopause medications. Before Labor listed hormone replacement therapy on the PBS, Susan was paying about $120 every month for an Oestrogel pack. Now, she pays $25 every two months for the exact same prescription. What once cost her more than $1,200 a year now costs $150, putting over $1,000 back into her pocket annually.

More than one million women have accessed $25 PBS scripts for essential medications like the pill and endo and menopause treatments. This is real cost-of-living relief. We've introduced dedicated bulk-billed menopause health assessments. More than 137,000 women have already accessed these assessments. We've also made fertility treatment more accessible and affordable, expanding Medicare subsidies for IVF treatment and PBS scripts for Pergoveris, saving families thousands.

The Albanese Labor government has finally made women's health a national priority, which is making a huge difference to women and girls in my electorate of Dickson. For far too long, women's health was ignored and cost too much. The flow-on effects were less income, less super, more sick days and more struggle. Labor has changed that.

Is the motion seconded?

I second the motion.

Imagine being exhausted all the time, bruising easily, gaining weight and knowing your own body well enough to know that something is not right. You do what all Australians are told to do. You seek medical advice. You ask questions. You are told that maybe it is menopause, maybe it's stress, maybe it is just part of getting older—but something still does not feel right. That was Jenny Piper. For years, Jenny knew something was wrong. Jenny had Cushing's syndrome. A scan in 2022 showed a three-centimetre growth on her adrenal gland. It was missed. By the time it was properly investigated, it had grown to seven centimetres and it was cancerous. Jenny died in June. She was just 60 years old.

As a woman, I find Jenny's story frightening. I cannot hear it without asking how many times does a woman have to say, 'Something is wrong,' before somebody listens? To me, that is at the heart of this debate. Too many women know what it feels like to have pain dismissed, to have symptoms minimised and to be told that perhaps it's stress, perhaps it's hormones, perhaps it's menopause. Sometimes, those explanations will be right, but sometimes they will not. When they are not, the consequences of missing the next question can be enormous.

It's not about blaming doctors; our doctors, nurses and health professionals do extraordinary work every single day. It is about asking whether our health system is always giving women the opportunity to be heard and whether we are investigating early enough when something simply just does not add up.

Recent polling found only one in seven young women say their GP always takes their health concerns seriously. The Albanese government's own #EndGenderBias survey found that, of the women who responded, two-thirds reported experiencing gender bias or discrimination in health care and more than 70 per cent reported it in diagnosis and treatment. Those figures should concern every member of parliament not because it gives us another political label but because behind every percentage is a woman sitting in a consulting room, asking, 'Can somebody please tell me what is happening to me?'

There should be no division in this House about doing better. The coalition also have a strong record on women's health. We invested more than $353 million, we launched the National Women's Health Strategy and we made the first investment into endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics. And where this government gets women's health policy right, we should acknowledge it. The new menopause and perimenopause Medicare items are welcome; cheaper contraceptives are welcome; additional PBS medicines are welcome. Good policy should be supported regardless of what side of politics does it.

But governments also need to be prepared to ask: where are we still going wrong? Funding alone cannot solve all the problems. Sometimes a problem is not the absence of another program; sometimes it's where we have looked at women's health too narrowly. For too long, we have talked about women's health. The conversation has too often begun and ended with reproductive health. Of course, reproductive health matters enormously but women are more than just their reproductive system. We need to treat the whole woman—her heart, her brain, her bones, her mental health, her pain, her safety, her life.

Australia's first inquiry into women's pain heard from more than 13,000 women, girls, carers and health professionals. Among women experiencing pain, 90 per cent had lived with it for more than a year. More than half experience pain every single day: while they're going to work, they're raising their kids, they're caring for ageing parents, they're running businesses, they're studying, they're looking after their families and they're getting on with their life.

Generations of women have been remarkably good at just getting on with life—sometimes too good. They don't want to make a fuss. They put up with it. They get told it's normal, but we need to change that thinking. We need to stop asking women to live with pain and start asking why they are in pain. That's not radical; it's common sense. Endometriosis affects around one in seven Australian women and girls and yet diagnosis can still take years. We can do better. We must do better.

One of the key parts of this is going back to why what happened to Jenny happened and what cannot change. We've got to change it. We can decide what we learn from her story. The next woman who walks into a consulting room and says, 'Something isn't right'—we can learn from that. Those words should matter, they should be heard and they should be taken seriously.

Where the obvious explanation does not fit, somebody should be prepared to look again—earlier diagnosis, better access, better outcomes and recognising that women's health means caring for the whole woman. Jenny Piper knew something was wrong. She deserved to be heard sooner and every Australian woman deserves to be heard.

It's an absolute pleasure to second the motion from the member for Dickson around women's health and to support the contribution made by the shadow minister just then. It's nice to be in the chamber where we all agree. We all agree not just because we're women but because we're intelligent human beings and we understand when there's been an injustice, and in women's health there has clearly been an injustice. That injustice has come from science. That injustice has come from the fact that women were not part of medical research for a long time, excluded on the grounds that we were hormonally inconsistent. Obviously, as part of being women, that's our state of affairs.

I want to put this question to the chamber and beyond the chamber, for those listening at home. Have you read the symptoms for a heart attack as they present in a woman? Have you read the symptoms for ovarian cancer as they present in a woman? Well, the strange thing about both of those diseases, as they present in a woman, is that it could be any woman on any given day and any part of the day. The symptoms for ovarian cancer read like the symptoms of a period. They read like the symptoms of menopause. The symptoms for a heart attack in a woman can similarly read as if it's part of our reproductive system responding to things, rather than our heart.

This is the fundamental problem that we've had: a lack of women being represented in research and then a lack of pinpoint accuracy around the symptoms or how we could preclude general, everyday symptoms for women that are about our hormonal inconsistency—or our hormones, full stop—and how that might differ from any other given day for a woman, to assist us. Most importantly, as the shadow minister put it, we need people to take women seriously when they say they're in pain or when they say something feels different than yesterday or the day before or last week or last year.

We need what this government is delivering right now, and that is a real focus on the women's health package. I'm thrilled to hear the support from the other side for this work—absolutely thrilled. One of the things I want to make clear in this place is that, when I put a post up in my community about the fact that we were going to get a menopause clinic, a pain clinic and an endometriosis clinic in my community, the number of men who joined in that conversation online and tagged a sister, a cousin or a partner was extraordinary. This is now real, on the ground. We've broken through a barrier where the young men in my community are concerned about their partner missing work. They're concerned about what this means for the future. They're concerned about when they might be able to start their family. This is no longer just a conversation for women. In my community, this is a conversation for young families, and they are absolutely appreciative of the work that's being done—the work that's been started in this place across the last 15 years, I'm going to say—and how it continues.

The fact of the matter is that, since the announcement of this landmark $800 million women's package, more than one million women have filled over four million cheaper prescriptions for contraceptives, menopause therapies and endometriosis treatments, delivering more than $150 million in savings. More than 11,000 women with endometriosis have accessed PBS-supported treatments. That's 11,000 women who've been listened to who potentially weren't being listened to. More than 137,000 women have undertaken Medicare-supported menopause health assessments. This is extraordinary. This is changing lives on the ground every day, changing families' lives and changing the community.

Women now have access to the first new PBS-listed contraceptive pills in more than 30 years and the first new PBS-listed menopausal hormone therapies in more than 20 years. To put that in perspective, I'm a long time into this journey, but I can tell you that I was on the same contraceptive pill for over 20 years, and at my age—I was young when I went on it—I was putting extreme hormones into my body when that wasn't necessary. Now that's changed, and now we have new ones on the PBS, so young women aren't going to be on those levels of hormonal interventions. They'll be on sensible levels of hormonal interventions. I welcome the Albanese Labor government's focus on this. I welcome our continued focus on this. The better for women, the better for our communities and the better for everybody.

I welcome the opportunity to speak to this motion, and I want to recognise the genuine and long-term commitment to this issue that the member for Dickson brings, in so bringing this motion. I also want to associate myself with the remarks made by the member for Lindsay, our shadow minister, and also the member for Lalor. I think both of them have raised some excellent points, and I associate myself with both of those genuine and deeply felt contributions.

The widening gap in health care access facing women and girls is a critical issue that too often is ignored. I particularly want to address my remarks through the perspective of our regional communities across Australia, particularly regional Victoria. When you live in regional areas, your postcode shouldn't dictate your quality of life or the access to health care that you receive. But, too often, regional women do face systemic barriers, longer wait times and a shortage of the services that they need.

I come to this issue as a former board member of Lifeline Gippsland and someone who has taken a deep interest in mental health services in the Gippsland region. One of those areas that is most stark is the area of mental health. Regional areas face immense pressures, ranging from economic instability to environmental challenges, and those things take a massive toll on the mental wellbeing of women and girls in our regional towns.

I also want to make the point that, too often, women and girls are told when they present for medical consultation that their symptoms are normal or that they're making a fuss, and I think there's been progress made in pushing back on that issue, but there's more work to be done. Talking about it, as we are in this place, through this motion that the member for Dickson has brought forward, is one of the ways we can address that.

On the mental health front, I'm proud that, when the coalition was in government, we expanded the Better Access initiative to provide 20 Medicare subsidised mental health sessions annually. That was important for regional communities like mine, and I've spoken a number of times on that and the positive impact that it had. I would very much like to see it restored, and I'll continue my advocacy to this federal government to see those subsidised sessions restored from 10 to 20. That's because, for many regional women dealing with complex trauma, severe depression or postnatal anxiety, 10 sessions are simply not enough.

One of the issues that challenges access to health care for women in regional areas is not just structural; it is physical. We see that for many women who don't live in a major city or town area, who might live in a smaller or more remote community. Just the physical distance between where they live to where they need to access those treatments is a significant barrier.

I also see it in communities like West Gippsland, where the West Gippsland hospital is under extreme pressure. This is a great hospital. It's a very old building. It predates World War I in some of the infrastructure. The medical staff—more broadly, all of the staff and doctors there—are really dedicated to what they do. But the pressure on its maternity services for a hospital that consistently manages over 1,000 births every single year is making it the busiest obstetric hub in the entire Gippsland region. I very much am working with my state parliamentary colleague Wayne Farnham to get a new West Gippsland hospital over the line. But I do want to acknowledge local midwives and obstetricians who do an incredible job. They're dealing with a historic regional baby boom in parts of our region, and that is why we desperately need added investment into those services.

I could talk about a few other things. I know there's been bipartisan support for the endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics. I think these are a game changer. I welcome both sides committing and committing funding to them. We need to see more investment in that as well as an expanded Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme to list life-saving drugs and treatments.

There's a lot to say on this issue; isn't there? Last week marked Women's Health Week right across Australia, and this year's theme carried a vital practical message called 'Do it anyway'. Every single day across my community and right across the country, women balance other responsibilities—work, looking after aged parents, raising children, running households and supporting local community organisations and schools. But too often, in the middle of caring for everybody else, they neglect themselves, and their health gets pushed to the bottom. 'Do it anyway' is an urgent reminder to women that their health matters; that taking practical, achievable steps to seek care is essential; and that they deserve to be heard.

As a nurse and midwife myself, I know that for far too long Australian women have faced systemic delays in diagnosis, steep out-of-pocket costs and an unacceptable lack of treatment options. The system was built by men in a time when the men were all the doctors. That has thankfully changed now, and we have female representation in running health systems as well as participating at all levels. Women were also not included as research participants, so a lot of the medication particularly is based on men's bodies and physiology rather than women's. That's why I'm proud to be associated with our government's $800 million women's health package. We're delivering more choice, lower costs and better care for women.

In the last 18 months, one million women have filled over four million cheaper prescriptions under the PBS for oral contraceptives, menopausal hormone therapies and endometriosis treatments. That has delivered more than $150 million in direct savings right back to women directly. For the first time in over 30 years, new contraceptive pills were listed on the PBS, and, for the first time in 20 years, new menopausal hormone therapies were added. It's not that these drugs weren't there; they were always there and available but only for private purchase, not through the PBS. Our government has added them to the PBS system, which means that women are saving money directly and are maxing out at $25 a script because we've capped PBS scripts as well. Cost must not be a barrier to reproductive choice.

We're also dismantling—this is going to be interesting for you gents there—the silence and the stigma around menopause, perimenopause and women's health. I met recently with Kath Mazzella, OAM. I'd just like to ask a rhetorical question: do you know the difference between a penis and a testicle? I'm pretty sure 100 per cent of people here would know the difference. Do you know the difference between a vagina and a vulva? Then you start getting some grey area. Unfortunately, Deputy Speaker Buchholz is distracted, so we will never know if he knows the outcome of that. You can look it up later, Deputy Speaker! The reason I say this is because Kath has been fighting for 20 years to get attention to vulval cancers, and she's desperately upset at the fact that people don't give enough attention to vulval cancer issues. I said I would mention vulva and get it on the Hansard. Viva la vulva. Thanks for all the work you've done, Kath, in the last 30 years.

There are all of our 33 national endometriosis pelvic pain clinics and our national awareness campaigns that have already directed over 180,000 women to evidence based resources, cardiovascular health and a ministerial expert panel on women's health. We're also paying attention to First Nations, multicultural and LGBTQIA health. Women's voices deserve to be heard. Women often spend their lives caring for everyone else—I know that in nursing; it's a highly feminised workforce—but we also need to make time for our own health. We're determined to ensure that every woman in this country has access to the affordable, timely and dignified care that she deserves, and I commend this motion to the House.

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.

This morning I want to share the story of a young woman who lives in my electorate. Amelia is a 22-year-old woman who loves hiking and loves the outdoors, but she's also a young woman who has lived with endometriosis for most of her life. For years, Amelia had been suffering from endometriosis without any idea of what was causing her pain. For years, she was told that pain was simply part of being a woman. And, for years, she was told to just get on with it. But even with all those voices telling her otherwise, Amelia knew something wasn't right. Just being a normal 22-year-old was hard—making plans with friends, focusing on her studies and enjoying the outdoors. At appointments, she would have to explain again and again just how much pain she was in, while waiting for someone to take her seriously.

Eventually, Amelia received an endometriosis diagnosis. Her diagnosis was a huge step. Finally, she knew why she was so in much pain, why it was so hard to go about normal life and why she couldn't just 'get on with it'. But a diagnosis didn't make the journey easy. She faced treatment, procedures, ongoing pain and the uncertainty of not knowing what the next day may bring. Amelia's story is all too common. For too many women and girls, severe period pain has been normalised for far too long. They learn to push through it. They miss school. They miss work. They cancel plans. They live around their pain. That's why talking about women's health is so incredibly important.

Last week was Women's Health Week, with the theme of Do it Anyway. It's a simple message that carries enormous meaning. Do it Anyway recognises that women too often make themselves the last priority, putting their own health aside to focus on looking after others. But it also recognises how much stigma and fear some women face in those moments where they have to speak up for themselves. This year, Women's Health Week is about doing it anyway. Do it anyway—make an appointment and keep it. Do it anyway—ask a second question when things don't make sense. Do it anyway—speak up when something doesn't feel right. Just do it anyway.

On indulgence, I'd like to acknowledge my Aunt Kerrie Thomas, a theatre nurse at the Royal Hobart Hospital, and Uncle Gill Thomas, a retired pharmacist, and thank them for their contribution to the healthcare sector and acknowledge their presence in the chamber today.

Women's Health Week is also important because, historically, women's health has not been the focus. Conditions that mostly or only affect women have often been dismissed as something women just have to put up with. This approach has impacted women's health in many ways, but one area in which the impact has been particularly big is women's heart health. Cardiovascular disease is one of the leading causes of death for Australian women, and yet the symptoms and signs of cardiovascular disease in women have often been missed because women experience heart problems differently than men. We also need to recognise that cardiovascular risk can change throughout a woman's life. That's why we can't talk about women's health issues in isolation. It's why we have to recognise that women's health requires a life course approach to prevention, early intervention and access to appropriate care. It's why we have to take opportunities like Women's Health Week to talk about women's health issues properly.

This government is establishing a ministerial expert panel on women's health focused specifically on cardiovascular health. It will bring together medical experts, health organisations and women with lived experience of this important issue. It's also why the Senate has established a Senate Select Committee on Women's Health focusing on women's health issues, including fertility, postpartum health and women's pain, so that we can look at women's health holistically and make a real difference to women's health in this country—because young women like Amelia should be thinking about their future, not planning their lives around their pain; because women should receive targeted education and treatment that recognises that women don't always experience health conditions in the same way that men do; and because every woman deserves to know that their health is important.

I rise today to talk about the women's health motion. First, I'd like to acknowledge Australians who work in health care. Whether you're a carer, a nurse, a doctor, a surgeon, an allied health specialist—and the list goes on—thank you for caring for Australians. It's often a calling into these roles in health care beyond the salaries, and I thank those workers for the time, effort, energy and precision that they bring to their roles and for the wonderful job that they do across my community but also across the entire country. The coalition is proud of its record on women's health, and in our final budget and government we invested more than $353 million in the health of Australian women. That included $22 million to add new gynaecology items to the Medicare Benefits Schedule, including for assisted reproductive technology so that women could reach reproductive health care affordably through Medicare. As part of more than 2,900 new or amended PBS listings made when the coalition was in government, a range of medicines was listed to support conditions and cancers affecting women, including medicines for ovarian cancers, breast cancer and hormone transdermal patches. It was the coalition that launched the National Women's Health Strategy and it was the coalition that announced the historic first investment in Australia's very first endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics. That is a foundation that we on this side are proud of and one that others have built upon.

At the last election, both sides of this parliament committed a further $573.3 million to women's health. This was and is bipartisan because Australian women should be able to expect that, whoever sits on this side of the chamber and whoever sits on the other side, their health is not a political football. We are glad to see parts of it now in place: the new Medicare rebate for menopause and perimenopause assessments, cheaper contraception and new medicines listed on the PBS. These are good and overdue reforms, and the coalition acknowledges them as such.

But a commitment on paper is only worth something when a woman can actually use it, and that's where the government's falling short, because a Medicare rebate for a menopause assessment does not help a woman who cannot find a GP who will bulk-bill. A strategy on paper does not help a woman who cannot afford the appointment. Under this government, it has never been harder or more expensive for a woman to see a doctor. When the Prime Minister holds up one card, what he should be doing is holding up two cards, because, when you go to see a doctor today, you need to take your credit card.

And it is women who feel that first. Women are more likely to live with chronic conditions, more likely to be the carers in their family and more likely to put their own health last. So, when bulk-billing falls an out-of-pocket costs climb, it's women who quietly go without. They delay the scan, they put off the specialist, they wait and they hope it's nothing. Too often, by the time they can no longer put it off, something that could have been managed has become something far more serious.

So we'll hold this government to account on delivering the rest of what it promised and delivering it in full: the training for health professionals women rely on, the first national clinical guidelines so a woman gets the same standard of care wherever she lives and proper ongoing funding for the endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics that so many women depend on—the very clinics the former coalition government was indeed very proud to establish. For a woman living with endometriosis or a woman navigating menopause, timely and affordable care is not a nicety; it is everything. Right now, too many women are still missing out.

Of great concern is that Australia is going backwards in maternity care. At least 13 private maternity units have closed their doors since 2022. In Darwin and Hobart and on the Central Coast, whole communities have been left without a single private birthing option. And every ward that closes puts still more pressure on a public system already stretched to its limits. The coalition will keep working with obstetricians, with midwives and with hospitals on real solutions so that women can reach the fertility and maternity care they need, close to home.

Every Australian woman deserves care that is affordable and close to home and that understands her. The coalition is committed to that. We always have been. We'll keep developing the policy and we'll keep holding this government to account until every woman in this country gets the health care that she deserves, the health care that her family deserves and the health care that her children deserve.

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.