Motions

Feminine Hygiene

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. C. Bonaros:

That this council—

1. Notes the importance of women and girls hygienically managing their menstruation with confidence, dignity and without stigma;

2. Recognises period poverty is a significant issue for those who are already statistically at greater risk of being unable to afford basic essentials such as pads and tampons;

3. Acknowledges that it is unacceptable that any woman or girl in South Australia is unable, or has difficulty in accessing, menstrual hygiene items;

4. Agrees with the recommendation made by the South Australian Commissioner for Children and Young People in her report Leave No One Behind with respect to the provision of hygiene and sanitary items in South Australian schools; and

5. Calls on the government to work with the feminine hygiene industry and community partners to expand the current piecemeal provisions of sanitary product support in South Australian schools and develop a free, accessible and non-stigmatising supply and distribution scheme for a range of hygiene and sanitary items as a matter of urgency.

(Continued from 13 November 2019.)

The Hon. I. PNEVMATIKOS (19:52): I rise today to speak in support of the Hon. Connie Bonaros' feminine hygiene motion. Considering that in the last 125 years women have been underrepresented in this parliament, it is no surprise that we have barely talked about menstruation in this place. I commend the Hon. Connie Bonaros for bringing the issue of period poverty to our attention and, in doing so, setting an example to normalise and destigmatise menstruation. Our society finds it difficult to talk about menstruation. Our cultural shame around periods has led to larger issues ensuing.

Menstrual hygiene management has become a low priority in health education. Our cultural shame and personal embarrassment around talking about and purchasing sanitary products and ensuring women and girls have proper access to the sanitary products they need has not been properly addressed. Australia has made a global promise to end period poverty. By signing the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals we have a responsibility to address access to sanitary products not only in our aid and development efforts overseas but also in our own country.

More than 130,000 people, including 22,000 children, are living in poverty in South Australia. About half of these people are female, many of whom will have their period on a monthly basis. Often, these women and girls are forced to forgo adequate sanitary items. The Commissioner for Children and Young People, Helen Connolly, agrees. The Leave No One Behind report uncovered that period poverty is prevalent in South Australia. In an interview, the commissioner stated:

Girls talked about how these items were expensive and that on a limited income, a choice between sanitary pads and food on the table, food always won.

If a girl or woman cannot afford the appropriate items she needs, she will use alternative methods or take extreme measures to access sanitary items. Alternatives for women in Australia include using old fabrics or cloths, leaves and underwear to act as makeshift pads. Women have also been known to take dangerous measures, including stealing, to get sanitary items.

A report released by the University of Queensland's Global Change Institute stated that girls and women who were normally law-abiding felt forced to steal sanitary pads from local stores because packets could cost up to $10.

Instead of using alternatives, many girls and women disengage from their day-to-day lives and remove themselves from everyday activities. The largest and most worrying indicator of this is girls missing school because they do not have the adequate needs to manage their periods. Mothers and grandmothers in Indigenous communities have been quoted in reports saying that girls were not attending school for several days each month because they felt they could not manage their period at school.

Girls missing out on school did not just blame access to sanitary items, they also said the schools lacked education and appropriate facilities. Bathrooms in schools are not equipped to deal with menstrual hygiene. Mothers and grandmothers in remote Indigenous communities have said:

…girls are missing school when they have their periods…because they don't want to change [pads] at school…[at schools] often there's no soap…there's often no rubbish bins or there's one rubbish bin outside the toilet which is really embarrassing to use.

The Labor government of Victoria's scheme to give free pads and tampons to help girls thrive at school is a truly amazing program. Girls receive important health information about how to manage their periods, free bins for sanitary product disposal and a discreet way to access the sanitary items they need. The program makes it possible for girls to access the items they need without stigma, without embarrassment, and breaks down that barrier so they can get a great education. I admire the Hon. Dan Andrews, member for Mulgrave and Premier of Victoria, for leading such a powerful initiative to help reduce the stigma around sanitary products.

Girls having to take time off school begins a vicious cycle of events. We know that poor school attendance reduces a girl's economic potential over the course of her life and impacts upon her health, which extends also to the girl's sexual and reproductive health outcomes. Her self-esteem will be affected, her sense of self-control damaged and her dignity knocked down. This issue is almost hidden in our community but it is common among those who are homeless and those experiencing poverty.

Without limited quantitative data around period poverty, it is hard to determine the exact extent of the issue; however, it is not hard to imagine the hardships that not having access to sanitary items would bring. Periods are a normal part of life for most women. As leaders, we have the responsibility to lay bare the taboo subject of menstruation. We have a responsibility to make it normal and give women and girls the best access to menstrual hygiene. The fact that anyone should have to forgo having adequate sanitary items is not only unacceptable but intolerable.

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (19:58): I rise to briefly express my support for this motion that notes the importance of women and girls being able to manage their periods with confidence, dignity and without stigma. I thank and congratulate the Hon. Connie Bonaros on bringing this important motion to the chamber on the back of the findings regarding period poverty in the Commissioner for Children and Young People's report, Leave No One Behind.

The report highlighted that some girls and young women are missing school because the household cannot afford sanitary products and that almost 20 per cent of schoolteachers (all being female) have purchased sanitary products for students with their own money. This includes going to the chemist or supermarket in their own lunchbreak.

The commissioner's report also provides concerning statistics raised by 48 public regional and metropolitan high schools, with 74 per cent of schools believing that access to sanitary products is an issue for their students. In 55 per cent of schools, word of mouth is the only way students can find out about accessing sanitary products, and 88 per cent of schools want the department to resource sanitary products in their community. Periods are a fact of life. Sanitary items are a necessity, not a luxury. It is time to get serious about periods.

As I mentioned earlier, I will not be speaking at length on this motion today as I will expand on my contribution when discussing the free menstrual hygiene products pilot program bill, which was introduced today by the Hon. Connie Bonaros and co-sponsored by the Hon. Irene Pnevmatikos and the SA Labor team. This bill, if successful, will be an important step in ensuring that girls and young women in SA schools participating in the pilot program have access to free pads and tampons, and it will help young women to no longer feel embarrassed about managing their periods at school.

While I agree with the Hon. Connie Bonaros that period poverty is real—and it is disheartening that so many young women in our community are going without basic necessities like female sanitary items due to affordability—I do feel for all the women and young girls who are caught out when they unexpectedly get their period at school and have no products to support them. As both the Hon. Connie Bonaros and the Hon. Irene Pnevmatikos have already stated, as leaders we need to acknowledge that sanitary items are a necessity, just like toilet paper.

We need to provide a level of confidence to girls and young women that sanitary items are accessible to them when they are at school. A young student confronted with getting her period unexpectedly at school without the support of products being available or easily accessible will feel embarrassed, have anxiety and ultimately feel that she will just skip school to avoid any discomfort, especially if she has to do physical activities that day. This is why the bill Labor is supporting seeks to make pads and tampons accessible by installing product dispenser machines within school grounds, removing the embarrassment of having to ask a teacher for products.

Many parents might feel uncomfortable talking about managing menstrual hygiene with their children. I know this has certainly been the case for a number of single fathers who are raising young women. If girls and young women feel embarrassed to talk about sanitary products in their own home, I doubt they are going to go to the front office and ask for sanitary products there. As indicated in the commissioner's report, it is simply too much for some students to emotionally confront and, as I said before, they will just skip school instead of trying to tackle the problem. I look forward to supporting this motion and discussing the bill further at a later point.

The Hon. M.C. PARNELL (20:03): I rise to support this motion as well. I note that, within the Greens team, education falls within the portfolio area of my colleague the Hon. Tammy Franks, but I am keen to make sure that this debate is not conducted only amongst the women in this chamber, so I will add a few comments.

We had already decided that this was a motion we were going to support, but what added to that support and was helpful for me was the newsletter that many of us received in our inboxes today from the South Australian Association of State School Organisations (SAASSO). They took the Commissioner for Children and Young People's recommendations about the free, easily accessible and non-stigmatising provision of sanitary products to female school students and asked their readers what they thought about it.

They had a high response rate. They had 1,362 people who responded. Of those respondents, nearly 80 per cent—79.41 per cent—agreed that this was an overdue initiative and only 20 per cent said no. Interestingly, nearly 90 per cent of school principals thought that this was a good idea. SAASSO have helpfully extracted not all of the 1,362 responses but a selection of the comments that people made.

Some of these people are teachers and some of them are parents of schoolchildren. They point out that the comments were generally supportive, but some people thought that the conversation was a little bit tacky. That goes to what the Hon. Irene Pnevmatikos said, which is that it is not a subject that we are comfortable talking about. So I have found some of these quotes that I would not normally be comfortable talking about, but I am going to do it anyway. Some of the comments that came back were:

It's a basic necessity that more and more families are unable to afford.

I wish that it had been provided when I was at school. Would have saved a lot of embarrassing moments!!

Another one:

Not all students can afford to access them…simple as that…this is a basic need.

Another one from a teacher:

I keep them in my desk for students.

But then another teacher says:

Great idea. Better than us teachers paying for them out of our pockets. Thanks SAASSO.

And the one that is a little bit more confronting, but let's not call a spade a Geoprobe:

If you want students to be at school and learning, they need to be not starving and not worried about blood running down their legs. This is really a no-brainer.

I support the motion.

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (20:05): I rise on behalf of the Greens to also speak in support of this motion. This year, we have seen Victoria become the first state in Australia to roll out the supply of free pads and tampons in schools. Menstruation has been, and is still being used, against girls and women to disenfranchise them, to stigmatise them and to oppress them in countries all around the world.

Recently, I was at an Australian Association of Social Workers national conference in South Australia and one of the projects that really struck me was the provision of sanitary products for girls in particular where there had been conflict or natural disasters, because, until recently, people had not thought that perhaps that might be something that girls and women at that particular point of those emergency and crisis situations might need.

It is important work when we know that, in some villages, to this day, women and girls are ostracised, are pushed out of a village, are put into certain rooms or are excluded from school once they start to have their periods, and it is not just on those days that they have their periods in some cases but for the duration after when they should be getting the education that we know is so important for girls and women and certainly for the Millennium Development Goals as well.

This social stigma is the cause of fear, embarrassment and anxiety. Listening to the speeches earlier today, I was actually a little bit emotional about this because I remembered the first day I got my period. I was at school and I was bleeding and I did not quite know how to manage it. I certainly did not have sanitary products. I had a light blue uniform and I bled through the back of it. Fortunately, there was a jumper. I do not even know if it was my jumper. I know that I wore that jumper around my waist for the entire day. I remember how long the walk home was that day and sitting in places all day at school so that nobody knew I had just got my period. That was in year 7 and it sticks with me to this day.

I am very pleased today that I do not have shame in telling you that story. I just have emotion because I remember how stressful and difficult that day was. My mother had put pads in a cupboard, so when I got home, I had pads in a cupboard. That was the best part of that day really. Had there been pads in a place where I knew I could have gone without talking to a teacher, without asking one of my friends—none of whom, by the way, had sanitary products—without having to roll up a whole bunch of toilet paper and deal with the mess that was already there that day, that day possibly would not stick out in my memory so vividly.

So thank you, the Hon. Connie Bonaros, for the bill that you brought in. I got quite emotional listening to the speeches and remembering that earlier on today, but I have no fear and shame in saying that. I am really glad that, in Australia in 2019, we have come to a place where we can talk about endometriosis, which I was very proud to champion in this parliament.

I had somebody formerly on my staff who is now part of the PPEP Talks, going out to talk to girls—and boys—in schools about how not all period pain is normal and natural and how some period pain we need to talk about because it is in fact a medical situation that needs addressing and that we should not be telling those girls to harden up and deal with their pain, just as we should not be telling these girls that they need to be ashamed and stigmatised and hide and suffer if they are caught in situations where they have their periods.

For anyone who has had to buy pads every month on a low income budget, you know that these are significant costs and that adds to the burden, particularly for girls from poor families. Poor families are doing it damn tough. They are living well below the poverty line if they are on an income payment, and we all know that Newstart needs to be raised. But adding to that burden means that girls do things like stretch out the use of their sanitary products, which is both unhealthy and is not conducive to them getting the education that we know they need. They are missing out on things like sport. They are missing out on excursions. They are missing out on going to the swimming pool. They are missing out on having social times with their friends. They are missing out on life, absolutely.

I have a young daughter of this age, and I know. I look at her and her peers and I see the fear, I see the planning. I know that I used to look at the calendar and work out whether or not the swimming carnival was going to be on that day or another day. All the women in this place are nodding because we know that that is how we have to manage this.

The idea that somehow we can control it, that somehow we can stop this, that somehow we will always know the exact time and date and location we will be in when it starts is part of the mythology. We know that is simply not the case. We know that it is a barrier to participation in the fullness of life: of social life, of private life and of education. I think this is the easiest way that we can remove a very significant barrier that never gets discussed, certainly not in places like this.

Many women in their lifetimes have experienced that situation where they have been caught off guard without sanitary products on hand. When this happens, we know that the girls at the moment in schools are expected to go and ask a parent, teacher, another girl or the office staff. Many of them, as the previous speakers have noted, are embarrassed enough about the fact that they have their period, let alone having to go and ask somebody for sanitary products.

Pads and tampons should be available to everyone who needs them, when and where they need them, at no cost, not hidden away in a school office or a first aid kit. While menstruation should not be something to be embarrassed or ashamed about, we do need to know that actually it still is for many girls and even some women. Living in poverty, in particular, will only add to this. Water is a necessity, and it is provided in schools for free and is readily accessible. Toilet paper is a necessity, and it is provided in schools for free and is readily accessible. Pads and tampons are a necessity, and they should be provided in schools for free and be readily accessible.

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (20:13): I rise to make some remarks in relation to this motion and thank the honourable member for bringing this matter to the parliament's attention. I echo many of the comments of previous speakers in terms of yes, it is a modern day when we can talk about these things openly. Yes, that is a fantastic thing.

Obviously, women have been menstruating for centuries, so in that sense it is not a new issue, and there have been for a number of years calls to make hygiene products more accessible and more affordable for all women and girls. There have been a number of organisations who have been in that space of which I think a number are known to members in this place, particularly for their work in terms of providing services to women who are experiencing homelessness.

I understand that Hutt St Centre and maybe Essentials 4 Women, who provide these services, have certainly had outlets in MPs' offices and other places for some time, so I think it is part of a community movement. It is also pleasing to note that, in more recent years, the GST has finally been removed from hygiene products, which I think took place last year. Our Treasurer was involved in those negotiations.

In relation to the matters that are in the motion, the Department for Education is committed to providing a supportive environment for the healthy and dignified management of menstruation and has a number of resources and learning tools available to students, parents and teachers to assist in menstrual hygiene management.

The advice I have received is that the department has been liaising with Share the Dignity, which is one of the charities in this space. Following their interest in providing a number of schools with free vending machines containing sanitary pads and tampons, the department is supporting the development of a licence agreement to enable Share the Dignity to operate vending machines in schools when they become available.

The government is continuing to work with schools and non-government organisations, including but not necessarily limited to Share the Dignity and Essentials 4 Women, on increasing the support given to vulnerable young women in our schools. I also look forward to making some more comments in relation to the bill that is before this place, which I understand will be called to a vote in the near future. I move to amend the motion as follows:

Paragraph 4—Leave out 'Agrees with' and insert 'Notes'

Paragraph 5—Leave out paragraph 5 and insert new paragraph as follows:

5. Calls on the government to continue to work with the feminine hygiene industry and community partners to expand the current provision of sanitary product support in South Australian schools.

The Hon. C. BONAROS (20:17): I thank all honourable members for their contributions. I think we have extensively exhausted the issue of periods in this place today. For the benefit of sharing in what the Hon. Tammy Franks has said, I was wearing white, I missed out on swimming that day and I hid in a toilet block until somebody ran to the front office to save me by requesting one of those products. Above all, when I finally emerged, red faced, I remember Mr Schneider, the deputy principal, telling me, 'It's okay. I have two females at home.' So there we go, and I am sure we all have a very similar story to that.

I would like to thank all honourable members for their contributions. I really look forward to debating this issue further when the bill that has been introduced today is dealt with in this place. With regard to the minister's amendment, I have to admit that that has only just come to my attention. I am pleased to hear that there is work underway with Share the Dignity. I understand that there may be work underway with Essentials 4 Women.

I have not had the opportunity to consider the amendments that have been proposed, and I apologise for that. I think the point that we are trying to make with this motion is that, up until now, this has been a very piecemeal approach, and that is not good enough. We need a coordinated approach to ensure universal access to these products across schools. For that reason, my preference would be that the motion remain as is. With those words, I thank the honourable members again for their support and their contributions.

The PRESIDENT: I put the question that the amendment to paragraph 4 moved by the Minister for Human Services be agreed to.

The council divided on the question:

Ayes 7

Noes 12

Majority 5

Question thus resolved in the negative.

The PRESIDENT: The next question is that paragraph 5, as proposed to be struck out by the Minister for Human Services, stand as part of the motion. It is put this way because the minister is seeking to replace one paragraph with a new paragraph.

Question agreed to; motion carried.