Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I will contribute briefly on this motion today. I congratulate Senator Waters for this initiative. This is what getting more women elected to parliament can deliver. We wouldn't be having this debate if we didn't have women in this place putting these issues on the agenda, working across party lines and delivering better outcomes for the whole community but, in particular, women. I've sat in this place for a long, long time and never heard a debate about menopause, and that's a shame. That is an absolute disgrace. So what a wonderful thing that we can now openly discuss this issue across the chamber and have such a commitment from all sides to deal with this issue, because it is, as my fellow senators in the room today have already mentioned, an issue that impacts half the population yet too often is put in the 'don't talk about it' cringeworthy bucket.

But it starts for women not when they are in menopause or the lead-up to it. The cringeworthiness, the ickiness and the attitude of not wanting to talk about it start when you are a girl. They start when you're a child. They start when girls are taught not to talk about the fact that their period is coming and are taught to tie their jumpers around their waists at school because they might show the spots on the back of their school dress. It's the shame that comes from telling your schoolmates that you've got your period that day. It comes when you go to the supermarket and they ask whether you want the packet of tampons in a paper bag, because we can't possibly talk about the fact that we might have our period. This is shutting down of a discussion of something that impacts every single one of us as women—half the population. It's 2023, and we still have this inability to talk openly about period blood and cramps. In fact, when it does get discussed—whether it's about the period or whether it's about menopause or the issues that come from these moments and this period that we're going through as women—it gets put in terms of, 'Oh, how is it affecting her feelings or her mood?' It's not actually about what's going on with our bodies.

I am a patron of the Ovarian Cancer Australia association, and the reason I am is that I am sick and tired of women's health being put in the too-icky, too-hard basket. The reason we have one of the deadliest cancer rates amongst women when it comes to ovarian cancer is that people don't want to talk about it. The symptoms that come from it are considered to be just normal things, so they're overlooked, yet it is one of the deadliest cancers on earth. There is no cure, and the death rate is horribly high. You're more likely to die than survive ovarian cancer if you've got it, and a big part of that is our inability as a society to talk about women's health in a meaningful, upfront way. It starts right from the beginning, when we tell young girls not to talk about their periods. It is about our reproductive health and how it impacts on the rest of our lives, on the rest of our days, on the rest of our body, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. I really hope this inquiry can start to break that cringe, lift and wipe away the taboo, and allow women to talk about what is happening with our bodies in a way that is normal, normalised and shows there is nothing to be ashamed of.