Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

In the government's view, where those products appeared on the list was the wrong place for them to appear on the list. Period products are not a lifestyle product. I think what is intended to be conveyed, though, is this principle: payments for supports must have a connection to the impairment as it arises under either section 24 or section 25 of the act—that is, period products are not used arising from the disability. I think everyone in the government would concede it is not appropriate to describe them in the way that you have just described them—as you sought for me to clarify—and that it is simply as a result of them being put in that category. The principle, though, is that, if support is required because it arises from a disability that comes out of sections 24 and 25, and if it's on the list, then that will happen. That is not the case for those products. The alternative language that the department intends to provide says that menstrual products are a 'daily living item'. That must be a category that was set out in the thing. I think 'lifestyle' is a very unhelpful place for those products to have been ascribed to. They are a daily living item.