Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Health and Aged Care. How is the Albanese Labor government making medicines cheaper for Australian women by listing the first new contraceptive pills and menopausal hormone therapies on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme? How is it that these medicines have been left off the PBS for so long?

Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

But you were in government.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for New England is warned.

Mark Butler (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate the interjections by the member for New England on women's health. I particularly appreciate the question from the member. She is such a strong advocate for health care here and in the Hunter. She tells me, like so many members of our caucus do, that women, right across the course of their lives, face significant medical and medicine costs not because they are sick but because they are women—particularly around contraception and during menopause and perimenopause. The PBS is a great system, but it has to be kept up to date if it is to serve the interests of Australians. I'm proud we have made almost 300 new and expanded listings for the PBS, including the first listing of a new endometriosis drug in more than 30 years, Visanne, but it has to be said that too often the PBS has not been meeting the needs of Australia's women.

There has been no new oral contraceptive pill list for more than 30 years, and no new menopausal hormone treatment for more than 20 years. That is why I wrote to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee urging them to work with industry to rectify that. I'm so delighted to say that all that changes in a couple of weeks' time on 1 March. Two new oral contraceptive pills—Yaz and Yasmin—that are used by tens of thousands of Australian women will finally go onto the PBS, saving those women between $200 and $350 a year. On the same day, three new menopausal hormone treatments, used by 150,000 women every year, will go onto the PBS as well. Treatments like Estrogel Pro, which costs about $670 a year, is truly life-changing, as Allie Pepper, Australia's most accomplished female mountaineer told us on Sunday when we were launching the policy. Women will save up to $580 a year after these listings take effect in a short while.

This package reverses decades of neglect and inaction, and finally delivers Australia's women more choice, better care and lower costs in these areas. It builds on all of our other cheaper medicines measures that have already saved Australians $1.2 billion at the pharmacy counter—important cost-of-living relief which was opposed by the Leader of the Opposition. So I was intrigued to read that Senator Cash had said on Sunday that they support our package, because apparently it builds on what they had done in government. This was surprising, because there was not a single endometriosis medicine, not a single oral contraceptive pill, and not a single menopause hormonal treatment added to the PBS in their nine years. Of course, it was only nine years. What on earth can you do in a time that short?