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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-06-15 Daily Xml
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Period Poverty

The Hon. C. BONAROS (15:53): Evidence about the impact period poverty is having on the lives of young women is growing by the day. It is why the Queensland government announced last week that all its state schools will be given the opportunity to receive a dignity vending machine, which provides free period products to students, after a $13.3 million commitment in next week's state budget.

The Queensland premier correctly stated that access to essential period products should never be a barrier to learning. Making the announcement, she said:

Access to period products and misplaced stigma around periods should never be issues students face at school. We know providing access to free period products can make a real difference, especially for students whose families are doing it tough, have unstable accommodation or are fleeing domestic and family violence.

Her announcement comes as new research reveals period pain is taking a toll on girls' academic performance, as they report not being taught enough about menstruation before their first period. Western Sydney University surveyed more than 5,000 girls aged between 13 and 25, who reported that menstrual health literacy has a direct impact on young people's quality of life, health, academic and professional performance.

So the problem is twofold: schools need to improve the way they teach young girls (and boys) about the impacts of periods while also ensuring they have access to free sanitary items at school to prevent young women from having to skip school because they are menstruating and do not have the necessary products available to them.

It breaks my heart to think that young girls across the country continue to go to school without the necessary period products for something as natural as a period or, worse still, are not attending school at all because a family cannot afford to purchase any of these sorts of products. The access to and use of these products in schools has to be normalised Over 60,000 South Australian households are living below the poverty line, so this is a reality for many families.

Three years ago, the Commissioner for Children and Young People released a major report, Leave No One Behind, which highlighted the impact of period poverty on South Australian schoolkids. We are still talking about that report. She followed this up with an in-depth report entitled Menstruation Matters a year later, after surveying and speaking with more South Australian students. We are still talking about that report.

Our end goal must be to mirror a world-leading initiative in Scotland, where period products are free for anyone who needs them, whether that be at school, university, a community club or a domestic and family violence shelter. As members of this chamber know, in 2019 and again in 2020 I introduced a co-sponsored private members' bill in this place which sought to establish a pilot program in 15 South Australian schools for the provision of hygiene products. The second bill passed the upper house but languished in the lower house.

In the meantime, the former education minister rolled out a lame trial at disadvantaged schools to the tune of $10,000 per school. Confusingly, schools were free to spend the grant money in any way they chose, so there was very little in terms of accountability. Following the trial in February 2021, the then Liberal state government announced it was allocating $450,000 over three years to provide sanitary products to school students from year 5 upwards.

When you consider that amounts to just $3 per student per year, we obviously still have a long way to go. That is probably one box of tampons or pads on special at Kmart or Coles or a chemist. It would have been so much better had the Liberal government of the day got on board with that co-sponsored bill in 2019. Back then, SA could have led the nation in this area of providing free period products for public school students. Like many other things, it failed.

Since then, Victoria has taken the front running, committing $20 million—compared to $450,000—in 2022 to installing dispensing machines in its over 1,500 public schools. And now the Queensland government has followed suit. A wonderful opportunity now exists for the Malinauskas government to follow in the footsteps of its interstate Labor counterparts and make period products freely available in South Australian schools. It supported my proposal in opposition. It co-sponsored that proposal in opposition and now it is time to step up to the plate in government and do precisely the same. Its support for a bill for a permanent rollout of the provision of period products in all South Australian schools is an absolute must.

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