Ellie Whiteaker (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

March is Endometriosis Awareness Month. One in seven Australian women live with endometriosis, and I am one of them. For too long, women's pain has been ignored and dismissed. For me, it took more than a decade of being dismissed and fobbed off by doctors to be diagnosed. I think this conversation is particularly important in light of recent allegations made against a surgeon at a private hospital in Victoria who, it's alleged, performed unnecessary and harmful surgeries on women who were desperately seeking answers for their pain. I know what it's like to be desperate in the search for answers for unexplained pelvic pain, and it's sickening that in the pursuit of those answers women have been treated with such harm and subjected to such trauma. We must do better by women.

Our government has made a record investment in women's health. We have opened pelvic pain and endo clinics right across the country and added new contraceptives and menopause treatments to the PBS for the first time in my lifetime. This is about making women's health care more accessible and more affordable for Australian women, but it's also about bringing these conversations out into the public domain. It's about making it okay to say that you have endometriosis—that you live with endometriosis or another pelvic pain condition. That means everything to Australian women—those one in seven Australian women who live with endometriosis, as I do.