Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Gallagher) to my question today relating to women's health.

I asked about the government's healthcare announcement, which was made yesterday, which has some really positive features in it. I'm really pleased that, after working on this issue for so many years and establishing not one but two Senate inquiries into women's health, that we're finally seeing some really positive action on this. But there's a big gaping hole in it, and that's what I wanted to quiz the government on in question time today. Unfortunately, I don't feel the wiser as to the answers to my questions, but what we see is that the government's announced that some contraception and some menopausal hormone therapies will be listed on the PBS. People know that that means it'll be cheaper for women to purchase at the pharmacy.

That's really helpful. But what I posed to the minister was, 'Why not just make those treatments free?' Some other countries around the world do that. Why should women bear the gendered cost of our very existence? We've had policies costed at the PBO which show that making contraception and menopausal hormone therapies free is eminently affordable. You could cancel just one nuclear submarine and you'd have a lot left over. These are the choices that governments get to make.

Whilst we welcome those PBS listings, we note that there are some other positive features of the package, but they don't come into effect, sadly, until after the election. Again, we see some pretty good promises, but really it's the delivery now that counts while you are in a position to deliver. The Greens want to be in a position to help you deliver after the next election, and we will keep pushing for women's health to be prioritised.

The key thing that was missing in yesterday's announcement from the government was any improvement on the accessibility and the affordability of surgical abortion. I know nobody is meant to be talking about this. Mr Dutton doesn't want his people raising the issue, and there seems to be some kind of taboo or cultural war going on over women's bodies, but fundamentally abortion is health care, and our public hospitals should be providing it. This is what we learned in the inquiry that I established a few years ago. What we see is that hospitals aren't reliably providing abortion care, for a whole range of reasons. Some of them are nefarious; some of them are due to funding.

We can fix those funding issues. The Greens costed a policy that said, if you simply pay these hospitals so that they can hire the staff, have the equipment and have the facilities, then you should revert back to your 2019 policy of saying, 'Actually, if you want Commonwealth money, you've got to provide the full range of reproductive healthcare services.' That was good policy that the Labor Party had in 2019. I'm really disappointed that they crab-walked away from it. We've been trying to get them to readopt it ever since, and they're not touching it. I think that's a shame.

People expect to be able to go to a hospital and get health care. It shouldn't be the case that, when you need a procedure that is health care and a basic right, for many women around the country it's a postcode lottery. Your local hospital might not provide surgical abortions. You might be in the predicament where perhaps your local GP is a conscientious objector and you're not able to get a medical abortion either. Perhaps your pharmacist is also a conscientious objector. You need both GP and pharmacist for the medical route. Once you pass the window for that, you've got no other option. We had some private providers. They closed because they weren't making enough profit.

Abortion access is a real problem in this country. It's great that it's legal everywhere now. That was something for the states and territories to fix, but affordability and accessibility sit squarely on the shoulders of the Commonwealth government. I was disappointed that yesterday was a missed opportunity to redress that and to actually fix that problem that so many women are facing.

We heard tales of women. One lady who lived just out the back of Townsville had nowhere to go locally to get a surgical abortion. She had to travel hundreds of kilometres—and it cost her thousands of dollars—to have a termination to end an unwanted pregnancy. She was in the fortunate position that she could afford that, but so many people are not. It shouldn't be up to the hospitals whether a woman can have a termination or not. That's a decision for her, in consultation with healthcare professionals and perhaps with the family. The Commonwealth simply saying, 'That's not up to us. It's up to the states,' is the ultimate buck-passing. It's a fig leaf, and we see right through it. We want to work with you to fix this problem. You should go back to having your 2019 policy that would ensure that hospitals can provide to women everywhere the health care that they need, particularly the abortion health care.

Question agreed to.