Women’s health has been central to my career – as an advocate, activist, and parliamentarian.
The reproductive health of women and the gender-diverse community has been ignored for decades, harming their quality of life and interrupting workforce participation.
Primary among my unfinished business is expanding access to abortion and family planning by stopping publicly funded denominational hospitals from denying people’s rights to these services.
And today I commit, if I am fortunate enough to be re-elected, that in the first 100 days of a new parliamentary term I will introduce new legislation to broaden public health system access for abortion and contraception.
It is change I am confident that we can achieve and will add to Reason’s record of establishing Safe Access Zones around abortion clinics.
Reason Party’s policies for this election include:
- A fully integrated endometriosis and pelvic pain centre for Victoria to cut diagnosis delays and increase treatment access.
- Significantly increased access to abortion, contraception, and family planning advice across the Victorian public health system.
- Menopause and menstruation support for Victorian workplaces.
After the recent US Supreme Court decision to overturn decades-old law protecting abortion rights, it is clear these rights cannot be taken for granted.
Just this weekend in Melbourne, a current member of the Victorian Parliament marched with supporters intent on overturning abortion law in Victoria.
We must not let that happen.
Fundamental rights are already being denied in publicly funded denominational hospitals that receive hundreds of millions of your dollars each year. People who pay for the health system are being mistreated by the health system.
Others pay in pain. One in nine women experience endometriosis. It is costing the economy close to $10 billion a year in acute healthcare and lost productivity.
By investing a minute fraction of that, the Victorian and Federal governments can not only save the community a fortune but reduce extreme and undue suffering.
I am calling for not only the establishment of Australia’s first endometriosis and pelvic pain centre for Victoria, but a complete Victorian endometriosis policy and strategy.
Endometriosis is a crippling condition involving tissue similar to the lining of the uterus growing outside it in other parts of the body.
I want to be back in Parliament to help ensure these life-changing projects go through.
And to continue to fight for reproductive and other health rights.
Policy Big Picture:
DATA BASE: My time in electoral politics since 2014 has been driven by a desire to make the place a bit fairer and better. I have done that through evidence-based policy and first principles including equality of opportunity, accountability, transparency and compassion.
GETTING STUFF DONE: Achievements include assisted dying legislation; improvements in women’s health; better and extended protection for minors in state care; exclusion zones around abortion clinics; harm minimisation reforms in drug law, including a medically supervised injecting room saving countless lives; spent convictions reform; pandemic-specific legislation to force the government to tell us its reasoning behind health measures.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS: The agenda includes further drug law reform to reduce harm; increase mental health care; tax profitable religious charities; prevent publicly funded hospitals and hospices from refusing to provide abortions, family planning and assisted dying; robust action on global warming; a new hospital for Melbourne’s north; formal inclusion of childcare in the education system; religious equality in Parliament, including respect for the non-religious.
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