STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator PAYMAN (Western Australia—Australia's Voice Whip) (13:22): Twelve hours of induction, of pain, of my body being pushed to its limit and then an emergency caesarean I was not prepared for—I remember shaking on that operating table, not from cold but from adrenaline and fear as they cut through seven layers to bring my daughter, Aaliyah, into the world.

Then came the part nobody warns you about. My husband was sent home, and I was left alone at 2 am, numb from the waist down and holding a newborn who was hungry, and I had no idea how to breastfeed her. In the bed beside me, another first-time mother faced the same night, the very same silence and the very same fear—two women, two babies, zero support.

Let that sink in, colleagues. We ask women to survive major abdominal surgery and then, within hours, to feed, soothe and lift a newborn completely on their own. I don't blame the midwives or the nurses.

They're stretched thin, doing the work of three people on every shift. This is not a staffing failure alone. This is a systemic failure, and it doesn't end at discharge.

It becomes the mental load that follows you home. Am I feeding her right? Am I a good mother?

Am I doing any of this properly? It's sleep deprivation that studies liken to driving drunk. It's the quiet triumph of a shower before 3 pm.

Mothers carry this, and they carry it silently, because we've told them that, unless you've lived it, you won't understand. We need to stop asking women to soldier on in silence. We need to fix the system underneath them.

Let's start with paid reproductive leave. The ACTU has been calling for this. It is a dedicated national entitlement so women aren't forced to burn through sick leave or go without pay to manage pregnancy, birth recovery and the health conditions that come with reproduction.

This should not be a luxury but the dignified right of every woman. Secondly, let's accommodate partners in hospital rooms. No woman should ever be left alone, numb and bleeding, hours after major surgery, trying to keep a newborn alive through sheer will.

Partners are not visitors; they are essential care. Finally, we need to prioritise informed consent. Asherman's Syndrome Australia has spoken out about the continued routine use of sharp curettes in procedures following miscarriage, retained placenta and postpartum haemorrhage, despite the World Health Organization and numerous clinical bodies warning that sharp curettes carry a significantly higher risk of scarring the uterus than safer alternatives.

Women are waking up from these procedures to find out, sometimes years later, that they can no longer have children, and they were never properly told of the risks that existed. Every woman deserves to give full informed consent before an instrument like this is used on her body. That starts with reclassifying the curette for what it is—a higher risk instrument.

Colleagues, having a baby is one of the most beautiful identity-altering experiences a person can go through. It is also, quite frankly, bloody tough. We do women no favours by pretending otherwise.

That is why I welcome the new Senate Select Committee into Women's Health, chaired by Senator Marielle Smith, examining exactly these postpartum experiences. To every woman watching this: your story is not too small, and it is not too painful to be heard. Whether it's just two sentences or two pages, please make a submission.

Tell them what your 12 hours looked like. Tell them who was and who wasn't in the room with you, because policy built without women's voices in the room will keep failing women in the room next door. It's time the system finally caught up to what mothers have always known.

Thank you.