Page 3708 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 23 November 2022
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MR DAVIS (Brindabella) (3.22): I will start the same way that Ms Castley did. I think men are great, but I suspect this suit and tie combination makes that pretty obvious! The ACT Greens will be supporting Minister Stephen-Smith’s amendment to Ms Castley’s motion. The amendment ensures that the government continues to take a gendered lens to public health to address systemic inequality in our health system.
Ms Castley’s motion seemingly reads as a very reasonable request. Why is it that, if we are directing attention and resources to addressing the health needs of certain communities—namely, women and LGBTIQA+ people—we would not develop a strategy and a specific approach to addressing the health needs of men?
There are gendered patterns in some public health issues in which men clearly outnumber women. Indeed, it is well known that, as a demographic, men have a higher rate of suicide than women. Most men, obviously, have specific body parts that require particular types of tests and awareness campaigns to prevent ill health, such as prostate and testicular cancer.
As a queer man, I am very familiar with specific public health interventions that are designed to keep me and my community health and happy, such as the use of PrEP and PEP to prevent the transmission of HIV. As someone who is currently caring for a man experiencing significant health issues that have arisen from a lifetime of blood, sweat and tears—hard yakka, Mr Assistant Speaker—I am acutely aware of the impact that masculinity, class and age can have on a body.
Supporting the amendment moved by the minister today does not deny the reality that men experience ill health and that men require care and support. There is just little justification that the ill health men experience arises from systemic oppression and inequality.
Over the last two years as an MLA, and as the ACT Greens spokesperson for health, I have had the privilege of speaking with several organisations that work directly or primarily with men on health and wellbeing matters, including Meridian, Menslink, the Domestic Violence Crisis Service Room4Change Program and EveryMan. These services engage directly with the relationship between masculinity and health, and work to provide support to men and boys, particularly on emotional, interpersonal and social matters. Our support of these organisations demonstrates an awareness by government and our community more broadly that men and boys sometimes require particular supports to enable them to lead happy, healthy and meaningful lives.
Anyone at all familiar with the rise of what is known as men’s rights activism has likely become familiar with the patter of these so-called activists, who argue that due to the feminist approaches to public health, men are missing out on care, and that the existence of women’s health services, LGBTQ health strategies and the like are indicative of the unfair emphasis being placed on the experience of minorities within health systems.
While it would be unfair of me to think that this is, at all, what Ms Castley is gesturing at in this motion, it would be remiss of me not to flag that, upon my initial
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