International Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day
This is a difficult motion to speak about, but as with many things in this place, the difficult things that we do are the important things. I want to thank the Member for Werriwa for moving this motion, and for her speech which I'm sure is very difficult for her, but I was so pleased to be here for it.
And similarly the Member for Ryan for his speech and for outlining the number of support services that are available to people who might be listening to this debate and feel that it triggered something or at some point in the future they may need some assistance. In moving this motion, the member for Werriwa has extended the hand of understanding and friendship to thousands of Australians, showing that there are people in this place who care for what they are going through.
It's a time where even your best friends struggle to find the right words to say. They speak slowly, carefully. There's a lot of silences, but people do want to help one another. And, if you think about 2020 this is just yet one more thing which the coronavirus has made more challenging for many thousands of families. Families separated by hard borders, international borders, virus suppression efforts, have made it all the more challenging.
And I do want to just note my thanks to the health professionals, thank them again. The Member for Werriwa just outlined just how important and often it's one of the things you don't necessarily get to say thank you to them at the time that they are assisting you or a loved one.
But they do an amazing job and kind of provide, again, someone who can become your best, you know, a very good friend to your family instantly when they are helping you with something this difficult. Every family's loss is different and every family's loss is real.
“Welcome to the world's worst club,” was the message my wife and best friend just received. A club that some 150,000 Australian women join every year. A club you never leave, a club we joined in November last year when we were still unpacking boxes of our new house.
“The big new house,” as my son Leo called it, necessary for our growing family. And when I found myself on the other side of the country in Townsville, on my way to Papua New Guinea, I got a phone call that no parent wants to get. Jess was in hospital and things are not going well.
And after the immediate grief, Jess and I believed it was important to share. Especially as you discover that so many of your friends then share with you something you'd never known had happened in their life. I'm going to use some of Jess's words, because she says,
“it's an incredibly normal, almost boring thing for a family to go through, but it happens to one in four women, so it's really unpleasant and had some really challenging moments to it, but we felt supported and loved and cared for as is humanly possible.”
It's an ongoing grief that affects many people in different ways. I, Jess, took time off in May on what would have been expected due date because I just decided I didn't want to have to soldier on that day. And it is important that you share and talk about these things and I think one of the things that 15th of October reminds us is that we do need to share and be open about all parts of people's health and families, not just those that are easier to talk about.
And for us when we now have a another bub due in December, and we thought, I will go through the story you know, Polly has a baby very exciting time. Talk to a journalist and we came to the conclusion that that would have just been false. That would have not been telling the full story. So I do want to thank Bonnie Scar from The West Australian for enabling us to tell some of our story with our community in Western Australia, and also note that this place is more supportive than people recognise.
And on that, I want to note the kindness of many of my colleagues, including the Leader of the Opposition, and on the other side, the kindness of the Member for Fisher.
And that brings us all to the question, what can we do in this place? We can invest more in mental health support knowing that depression anxiety and other health issues can often follow. We can do more to expand telehealth, protect Medicare, invest more in remote and regional health services, and more in Indigenous health services. Invest in research for how we actually help people in this space, because again, it is something that as others have noted - sometimes people just soldier on
My hometown of Perth, we need a new women's and babies hospital. It's an urgent health priority for my electorate and for Western Australians. It's a project that should be bipartisan, should be being built, and is well and truly overdue. I must also ensure that women's health services are available at all hours, for all communities and for people of all backgrounds.
We need to do more on parental leave, compassionate leave, and I want to commend the leadership of Senator Keneally on this matter. And, we just need to speak, share, and understand and offer the hand of support when people need it.
Thank you Deputy Speaker