I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month and that Wednesday, 15 October 2025 marks Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day; and

(b) this day acknowledges the shared loss experienced by parents, friends, and healthcare workers of babies lost through miscarriage, stillbirth and neonatal death;

(2) acknowledges:

(a) that there is a significant impact on families who have lost a baby;

(b) that every year 110,000 Australians experience a miscarriage, more than 2,000 experience stillbirth, and almost 700 lose a baby within the first 28 days;

(c) that stillbirth occurrence is higher in Aboriginal and culturally diverse communities; and

(d) all families who have experienced loss, either recently or over time; and

(3) commends the Government for providing more than $40 million to organisations to support women and families following stillbirth, neonatal death or miscarriage.

Over the last almost 40 years since I lost my child Michael in the neonatal period, little has changed regarding the number of families that are affected by pregnancy loss. In 2023, out of the 285,305 babies born in Australia, there were 3,128 perinatal deaths, or one per cent of all babies born. Seventy-nine per cent of those babies were stillborn, and 21 per cent died soon after birth. It is estimated that one in five pregnancies, or 110,000 pregnancies, will end in miscarriage each year and that one per cent to two per cent of those women will experience a loss of more than three babies by miscarriage. These statistics are significantly higher for Indigenous women and women who come from CALD backgrounds.

The Albanese government has been working for some years to provide support for families who experience this loss. Last sitting fortnight, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations introduced the Fair Work Amendment (Baby Priya's) Bill 2025, which introduces a new principle into the Fair Work Act that, unless employers and employees have expressly agreed otherwise, employer funded paid parental leave must not be cancelled because a child is stillborn or dies. This brings it into line with government paid parental leave and further supports parents at the worst time in their lives. When my third baby died, I received flowers from my employer at the funeral and, the next day, a letter saying my maternity leave had been cancelled and I should provide a doctor's certificate or return to work within seven days. This was less than three weeks after my baby was born and died. This has to change.

Over the period of 2022 to 2028, the government will have invested $62.7 million in measures to support healthy pregnancies, reduce stillbirths and preterm birth, improve national data collection and support families impacted by perinatal loss. Rigorous data collection provides researchers with clear targets of what to improve and then how to improve these statistics, because, for families, those losses are not numbers but little people who would have made their family whole.

In the budget 2024-25, the government announced $15.9 million for miscarriage education, awareness and support, funding for preterm-birth prevention strategies, monitoring and evaluation of the national stillbirth action plan and an additional $7.1 million to extend existing education and awareness for groups who are at a higher risk of stillbirth. Further, there was $5.3 million over four years to increase the specialised services to bereaved families. Services like Red Nose, Miracle Babies in my electorate, SANDS and others can be the lifeline for families experiencing these situations. They certainly were for me and my family in the early months after our children died. The support of organisations like this helped us talk and negotiate with doctors and other appointments. Every time we had another appointment in those early days, I had to relive the trauma and the anguish of what had happened. Having someone to talk to who had also been through a similar circumstance was important and helpful. It was wonderful to know our family was not alone.

The Albanese government has committed $23 million over four years to increase support for women and families experiencing stillbirth and miscarriage, supporting the Hospital to Home program, and bereavement care for the higher-risk population. As part of this, $13.9 million has been set aside to increase the number of autopsies with the aim to better understand and therefore reduce the rates of stillbirth, preterm birth and miscarriage. Recently, I was at a doctor's appointment where I was asked by the specialist how many children I had. This is a question that, even after all this time, I find hard to answer. I have five children, three wonderful healthy boys, aged 38 and 31, and Michael and Megan, who died 39 and 32 years ago. I still feel their loss keenly, and sometimes it's not easy to talk about. Old taboos still apply, but, with the support and recognition of organisations, like Red Nose and Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness, and significant funding and other supports by our government, I hope in the future it will be easier for anyone experiencing these tragedies.


Link to Hansard: Full Speech