STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator MULHOLLAND (Queensland) (13:01): I wish I had had the opportunity to meet Louise Blacker. I wish I could have told her everything was going to be alright. I wish I could have stopped her from taking her own life in 2001, when her baby girl was just nine months old.

But, two decades ago, Australia didn't talk about mental health, let alone perinatal anxiety or depression. We failed Louise, but her legacy is a shining light for all of us. She was known as 'Gidget' because of her resemblance to Sally Field in the 1960s sitcom of same name.

I first heard her story last week in Burleigh Heads, where it was my honour to open Gidget House at Burleigh Heads Stockland on behalf of Minister Mark Butler and Assistant Minister Emma McBride. Gidget House at Burleigh is a Medicare service funded by the Albanese government. The service is named after Gidget, and she was known by everyone as a warm, vibrant and wonderful woman—the literal life of every party.

She had a marriage she loved, a home she treasured and a baby on the way. But, beneath the surface, Gidget was suffering. She had unrecognised postnatal depression, and, despite being in constant contact with her mum and usually telling her mum everything, Gidget never found the words to explain the despair and the sense of loneliness she felt post birth, before taking her own life.

Here's the heartbreaking reality that we must confront: nearly one in five mums experience perinatal anxiety and nearly one in 10 dads experience something similar. In fact, demand for the specialist perinatal counselling service at Gidget House has soared by 214 per cent in just the last four years. While Gidget's death is a tragedy that can never be corrected, her legacy offers a beacon of hope for all new mums.

The mission of the Gidget Foundation is to make sure no mother, father or expectant parent has to face those dark hours without someone to talk to, someone trained to help or someone to reach out to. As a new mum, I know the loneliness of the pregnancy journey. For the first 12 weeks you are the sickest and most tired you've ever been in your life and your body is changing in ways that you can't imagine, but you're told not to talk to anyone, not to say anything, because the pregnancy may not take—only to arrive home nine months later and feel a different kind of isolation as you learn to care for a new life while panicking every minute of every day that something could go wrong.

While I will never get to meet Gidget, it is my privilege to honour her memory not just by telling her story but by acting on it. The Albanese government has provided $16.7 million to fund 20 perinatal mental health centres like Gidget House nationwide. They offer a free telehealth service so you can access free bulk-billed mental health support no matter where you live.

Please get online and visit the Gidget Foundation website to find a Gidget House near you—or just call them. It is our responsibility to rally around new and expectant parents and have these difficult conversations for them. As a proud part of the government that genuinely cares about women and women's health, the Albanese government has announced a half-a-billion-dollar funding package for women's health care over the next five years, which will flow from this Saturday.

This package includes, for the first time, PBS oral contraceptive pills—the first in 30 years—saving around 300,000 women up to $400 annually. It also boosts Medicare rebates for insertion and removal of long-acting reversible contraceptives, and it expands bulk-billing services and new services in menopausal hormonal therapies and in endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics.

Improving access to affordable contraceptives not only empowers women to make informed reproductive choices; it supports the management of conditions like endometriosis. Isn't it nice that in 2025 Australia has a government that can talk about sexual health like empathetic adults instead of using weird metaphors and dog whistles—the type of bizarro stuff we are seeing going on in the Fed Chamber at the moment, with the likes of Barnaby Joyce and his ragtag bunch of bros using the Baby Priya bill to dog whistle their rubbish.

I'm so proud to be part of a government that gets on and looks after women and families, and not that kind of rubbish.