In the aftermath of the horrendous attack on Indi independent Helen Haines, who is the best of what politics has to offer and the antithesis of Pauline Hanson, the air is thick with hypocrisy and humb...

The conversations we’re now having about perimenopause and menopause would have been unthinkable a decade ago. But this progress didn’t happen randomly. Women and women’s organisations have spent decades hauling health issues out of the whispering zone and onto government agendas, into budgets and into the mainstream media. So, it was bitterly disappointing, though hardly surprising, to watch One Nation turn Jacqui Lambie’s health issue – a vaginal prolapse into a punchline. The gag sits in Pauline Hanson’s Please Explain cartoon series. Lambie’s animated stand-in clutches at herself and announces she cannot laugh because of her prolapsed vagina. That is the joke. Consider how far we have come. In November 2022, then Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews promised $23 million for 1,500 free pad and tampon dispensers at up to 700 public sites, and said pads and tampons were a necessity, not a luxury. Period poverty was real, and a government was finally saying so. Scotland was the only country that had gone that far at the time. Victoria then ran Australia’s first inquiry into women’s pain. More than 13,000 people took part, and the report that followed in November 2025 made 27 recommendations. Seven in 10 respondents said a health professional had ignored or dismissed their pain. Then Premier Jacinta Allan, who has spoken openly about living with endometriosis, committed to an action plan. In August 2026, the Australian Senate set up its own select committee on women’s health, chaired by Labor’s Marielle Smith, which will hold public hearings across the country. Women in public life are carrying the conversation too. In August, Lambie told the Senate that about six months earlier her vagina had started to prolapse, and that three months later it was taking her bladder with it. She traced it to back injuries from her army service. Specialists are scarce in regional Tasmania, and her Department of Veterans’ Affairs claim was still unresolved, so she paid $7,000 for surgery in Canberra. She was speaking against a proposed $5,000 cap on allied health services for veterans, and she broke down while describing how little the system seems to think about female veterans’ bodies. That is courage. Nobody should mistake it for oversharing. Pelvic organ prolapse happens when the muscles and ligaments holding the bladder, bowel or uterus weaken and an organ slips into the vagina. Childbirth, heavy lifting and hard physical exertion are common causes. One in 12 Australian women is affected by some counts, and other estimates run much higher, because so few women talk about it and so little is measured. Of course, we were never encouraged to talk about this stuff. When we did, doctors rarely listened, and plenty still don’t. We cannot say “vagina” without it being treated as somehow sexual, when it is literally a body part. We do not mention the panty liners, because pushing out babies the size of watermelons left our pelvic floors weak. We do not mention the pain of endometriosis, which affects about one in seven women and takes an average of six and a half years to diagnose. And nobody warned us that perimenopause and menopause could leave us feeling like strangers to ourselves, mentally, physically and emotionally, or that this was normal. The money tells the same story. A Monash University study with The Sisterhood Foundation found that only 3.3 per cent of more than $3.5 billion in Australian research funding went to women’s health. We are half the population. Erectile dysfunction got Viagra, a household name almost overnight after its 1998 approval. Women are still waiting for most medical professionals to just listen to us. Mockery does a particular kind of damage. A woman who has been quietly putting off a GP appointment about a bulge, leaking or pelvic pain hears a Senator laughed at for exactly that and learns again that silence is safer. Shame is why prolapse is underreported in the first place, and a joke at a politician’s expense feeds it. Hanson, meanwhile, brings so much internalised misogyny to the table that it takes the breath away. Whether the subject is childcare, paid parental leave or family violence, which she recently called a “two-way street” on Brisbane radio, she has rarely been the voice in the room pushing for women and girls to have it easier than those who came before them. She and her party choose to be aggressive, destructive and divisive instead. So, let’s push against that and stand with Jacqui Lambie. Buy a mug. Say the word. The Vagina Collection by Jacqui Lambie keeps the conversation going, in partnership with the Hudson Institute of Medical Research. For every full-price mug or tote sold, $5 goes to research into detecting problems early, healing better after childbirth and making prolapse surgery safer. > View this post on Instagram > > A post shared by Jacqui Lambie (@senatorjacquilambie) Lambie put it plainly in the Senate: “Australian women’s vaginas are not made of Australian steel.” Australian steel, one suspects, probably gets more research funding. Independent MP Dr Monique Ryan put it better than most on her Facebook page: “One Jacqui Lambie is worth 1,000 Pauline Hansons.” Share this Jacqui LambieOne Nationwomen's healthWorld Menopause Day by Rita Nasr 15 hours ago ## Stay Smart! Get Women's Agenda in your inbox * Phone This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. * Email SUBSCRIBE ## Latest news ### Women can still be sacked in religious schools for getting divorced or falling pregnant through IVF. 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