Dr Monique Ryan

Australians are buying health products and services online faster than our regulators can keep up: commercial telehealth, weight-loss prescribing and now largely unregulated injectables.

In August, I wrote to the Health Minister calling for a parliamentary inquiry into telehealth services and online prescribing of peptides, medicinal cannabis, Ozempic, and other medications.

Australians are buying health products and services online faster than our regulators can keep up: commercial telehealth, weight-loss prescribing and now largely unregulated injectables.

Helen Haines is the most generous and kind person - a woman of warmth and great personal integrity.

Since 2019 she has been the model for me as a politician. She loves her community and works extraordinarily hard to represent Indi effectively and well. She was very generous with the new crop of independents in 2022 - it's why I had these T-shirts made.

Wonderful to be on this week’s episode of The Guardian’s Australian Politics Podcast, speaking with political editor Tom McIlroy about what dominated the headlines this past week. We spoke about a range of topics - from the private health bill to what's next for Kooyong, JSCEM, and more.

Pelvic organ prolapse - bladder or vaginal - affects about 1 in 12 Australian women. It's often linked to physical strain, heavy lifting or past childbirth. It’s uncomfortable and debilitating.

Resources Minister Madeleine King has claimed that emissions from the massive Beetaloo Basin gas developments "are accounted for and offset" - then qualified her statement with "but I would have to check that".

According to the experts, at least 95 percent of the 6 million tonnes of greenhouse gas produced by the most advanced projects in the Beetaloo Basin this decade will be released without any offset requirement.

Resources Minister Madeleine King has claimed that emissions from the massive Beetaloo Basin gas developments "are accounted for and offset" - then qualified her statement with "but I would have to check that".

The government is claiming it can fund aged care only by cutting healthcare support for pensioners.

But the reality is that it could find savings elsewhere, including by removing the diesel fuel tax credit, which subsidises industries such as coal mining and large data centres, or by ensuring oil and gas exports are taxed more fairly.

Every woman, wherever she lives in Australia, deserves the right to make decisions about her own body and to access safe, timely, and affordable sexual and reproductive healthcare.

It's good to see the Carroll government promising better access to those services. Jess Wilson should do the same. We also need the federal government to improve Medicare-funded gynaecological and obstetric services, especially for those living in rural and regional areas.

The government reintroduced its private health insurance cuts bill today after it was thrown out by the Senate yesterday. In his speech, the Minister was very passionate about the need to be fair, to ensure people over 65 have the same level of support as younger Australians.

That feeling when you knock off the government’s pensioner cash grab 🥳 Yesterday in Canberra, a Senate motion introduced by Jacqui Lambie and Anne Ruston blocked the government’s unfair PHI rebate cuts for over-65s.

This result builds on the amendment I introduced in the House, and my PBO analysis which showed the government’s changes would have taken $1.5bn out of the pockets of pensioners.

The first responsibility of governments is to protect us from foreseeable harm. As we head into a super El Nino summer, our government must act with more urgency to protect us from climate risks.

I'm calling on the government to immediately release a declassified version of the Office of National Intelligence assessment on climate security risk, and for an independent legislated National Climate Change Risk Assessment and Adaptation Plan released every five years.

The Albanese Government is the most secretive federal government we've had in decades. It protects lobbyists, keeps ministerial diaries closed, and has repeatedly made FoI requests more challenging and more expensive.

The government's planned cuts to private health rebates for over 65s would hit low-income pensioners hardest. They target older Australians who've made payments for decades to secure the certainty of private health cover in retirement.

Not to mention the government hiding the fact that half the savings will come from pensioners, while refusing to release modelling on how much these changes will cost the states.

The government's planned cuts to private health rebates for over 65s would hit low-income pensioners hardest. They target older Australians who've made payments for decades to secure the certainty of private health cover in retirement.

Margaret Mead told us that we should “Never doubt a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”

The government's plan to drop the private insurance rebate for over Australians aged over 65 will remove supports for over 2 million Australians with incomes less than $37,000 a year.

My PBO analysis showed that half of those affected are pensioners. The downstream impacts on public hospitals have been effectively ignored by the government, shifting that cost to the states.