Fair Work Amendment (Baby Priya's) Bill 2025

Ms COFFEY (Griffith) (12:11): I want to share with the House a story of infant loss from my electorate of Griffith. It's the story of Kate Warhurst. I think Kate tells this story better than anyone else, so I'd like to read her own words into Hansard: During a routine check at 39 weeks, my midwife had concerns with my blood pressure, and I was later diagnosed with pre-eclampsia.

I was induced after that pretty quickly and they said, 'This time tomorrow, you're going to have your baby in your arms. Elsie was born on the 16th August 2022. I was absolutely elated and so in love.

She had long fingers and toes like me, beautiful strawberry blonde hair and fair skin, bright eyes, a little nose and the sweetest little ears. Kate continued: I loved her hand on my chest and the smell of her head. Elsie wore outfits, had nappy changes, met my family, had a bath, a sneeze and was patient while we both learnt how to breast feed together.

Whilst we were in hospital, I started to feel unwell. I was taken to theatre and had retained placenta removed. I also had a postpartum haemorrhage and received many blood transfusions.

The next morning, Elsie suddenly became very very sick. She was taken to the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit). Kate said: I was wheeled down to NICU disoriented and broken.

There were teams of people around Elsie all the time but when I was wheeled close to her I leaned over and said, 'Mummy is here. I love you darling girl' and she lifted her arm. I know she responded to my voice.

The next day, a Neonatologist told my family and I that Elsie would not survive, having diagnosed her with Necrotising Enterocolitis, a gastrointestinal disease which causes part of the bowel tissue to die. It was a sudden onset with rapid deterioration. From pure joy to pure devastation.

Kate says: I remember screaming and trying to pull out my hair. It was like a sledgehammer. I was numb, a robot and dead inside.

No words can describe the immense intense grief and searing pain of Elsie passing away. Being on maternity leave without Elsie, in the midst of grief and postpartum changes, felt like an impossible life to be asked to live. I realised the only way I could survive this life would be to live for Elsie every day.

I would get out of bed for her because she is the bravest person I know. In the years since Elsie's passing, Kate has turned her grief into a profound act of love for other families in our community through the founding of It's from Elsie, an organisation that supports other families experiencing the pain of infant loss. In understanding the pain, suffering and loss of these families, I ask the House to consider what it would feel like to have your employer request your early return to work after an infant loss.

That is exactly what happened to Baby Priya's parents. Right now, this parliament is being asked to consider a bill that no parent ever wishes was necessary—a bill born from heartbreak but shaped by courage, compassion and love. The Fair Work Amendment (Baby Priya's) Bill 2025 carries the name of another little girl, Baby Priya, who died when she was just six weeks old.

It carries her name because it's her parents' brave advocacy and determination to transform unimaginable grief into change that bring us here today. No words in this place can truly capture the pain of losing a child—I'm very thankful to have been able to have shared Kate's this morning—but words in law can offer something: protection, clarity and dignity. That is what this bill does.

In Australia, six babies are stillborn every day, and more than 2,000 families each year face that loss. For pregnancies that reach 20 weeks, one in every 135 will end in stillbirth. For some communities, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and those experiencing disadvantage, that risk is even higher.

The loss of a child is a profound trauma. At such a time no parent should have to sit across from the employer to negotiate when they can take their leave. No parent should have to think about entitlements while they are planning a funeral.

No employer should be left uncertain about what the law allows them to do in these heartbreaking circumstances. This bill removes that uncertainty. It ensures that, where an employer provides parental leave, the death or stillbirth of a child cannot be used as a reason to cancel or refuse that leave.

It means a parent who has just had to endure the unthinkable retains what they are entitled to—time and space and security to grieve. The law should not add to a family's suffering; it should help carry it. This reform fulfils an Albanese Labor government commitment to guarantee that working parents who experience stillbirth or early infant death can continue to access their employer funded parental leave.

That commitment was made because parents who lived through this pain exposed a gap in the law—a technicality that allowed compassion to depend on discretion. Some employers, uncertain of their obligations, required grieving parents to return to work. This bill applies to all national system employees entitled to employer funded paid parental leave.

It makes clear that an employer cannot refuse or cancel that leave because a child is stillborn or has died. That protection stands unless a workplace agreement or policy already deals specifically with those circumstances or unless the employee requests this change. It also prevents employers from altering policies after the law takes effect to avoid this protection.

The bill respects the integrity of enterprise bargaining. It does not require employers to offer additional leave or override existing agreements. Instead it establishes a baseline of fairness, ensuring that, even in tragedy, basic decency is guaranteed.

It balances fairness with flexibility and reflects a simple truth: when workers and employers negotiate together, the best outcomes flow, but there must always be a safety net for humanity itself. We know that Australia is one of the safest places in the world to have a baby, but we also know that stillbirth and early infant death still happen too often and with devastating effect.

The impacts ripple far beyond the family—through workplaces, through friendship circles and through communities. When a baby dies, time seems to stop for the parents while the world around them keeps moving without them. This bill recognises that reality and gives families permission and space to pause, to grieve and to heal without the added burden of bureaucracy.

For employers—many of whom want to do the right thing but are unsure what that is—this bill brings certainty. It removes the pressure of discretion and ensures compassion is backed by law. At the heart of this bill are people: parents whose worlds have fallen apart, employers who want to do the right thing, colleagues unsure how to help.

Those of us who have walked alongside families after loss—in hospitals, workplaces or community groups—know that grief is not linear. It takes time, space and understanding. This bill cannot take away the pain of losing a child, but it can make sure the system does not deepen that pain.

So often the work of this parliament is about numbers, systems and frameworks. And sometimes bad faith actors in this place try to turn our work into fodder for continued culture wars, into attempts at cheap political pointscoring and into tactics aimed at creating division. But at its core our work is about humanity, about empathy and about fairness.

Legislation like this reminds us why we are here: to make the law kinder, clearer and more just. To Priya's parents: your courage has turned heartbreak into hope. Your daughter's name will live on in this law, in every workplace conversation that now has an answer and in every parent who is given time to heal without fear of losing their livelihood.

And to every parent who has known this grief: your love matters, your loss matters and your parliament sees you. This bill honours that love. It ensures that compassion is not left to chance.

It is written into the fabric of our workplace laws. That is what progress looks like. That is what good government looks like.

I commend the bill to the House.