Skye Kakoschke-Moore (SA, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes:

  (i) the importance of women and girls managing their menstruation hygienically, with confidence, dignity and without stigma,

  (ii) that women and girls without access to menstrual hygiene products resort to using newspaper, rolled up toilet paper, rags and leaves,

  (iii) that the average woman has 450 menstrual cycles in a lifetime, and each cycle will use up to 30 menstrual hygiene items,

  (iv) the discussion paper from the University of Queensland and WaterAid Australia, published in July 2017, which noted the challenge of some girls in remote communities who are missing school each month due to a lack of products to enable menstrual hygiene management,

  (v) that Australian women earn on average $261.30 per week less than their male counterparts, and they are more likely to live below the poverty line,

  (vi) that period poverty is a significant issue for those who are already statistically at greater risk of being unable to afford basic essentials such as pads and tampons,

  (vii) that menstrual hygiene items are a necessity and access to these items is a right not a privilege,

  (viii) that it is unacceptable that any woman or girl in Australia should be unable to access menstrual hygiene items,

  (ix) that, in July 2017, the Scottish Government announced that it will distribute free menstrual hygiene items to those in need as part of a six-month pilot program in Aberdeen, Scotland,

  (x) that the pilot program is expected to provide more than one thousand disadvantaged women and girls free access to menstrual hygiene items at various locations including secondary schools, homeless shelters and foodbanks, and

  (xi) that a similar pilot program in Australia would represent the first step in developing a sensitive and dignified solution to making these products easily accessible to those who need them; and

(b) calls on the Government to fund an evaluated pilot program in low socio-economic areas around Australia based on the trial in Aberdeen, Scotland, where free menstrual hygiene items are being distributed to women and girls.