Mehreen Faruqi (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens support the Fair Work Amendment (Baby Priya's) Bill, which is the result of a tireless advocacy campaign by Baby Priya's family and the Australian Services Union. We know that this bill, which extends paid parental leave to parents who have had a tragic stillbirth or lost an infant within the leave period, will make a huge difference for families who have suffered unimaginable losses. To go through this loss and then to be expected to immediately return to work is unfair, it is unjust, and it is unnecessary. This is an important step forward in doing our bit to support families and parents who are suffering tragic losses.

The fact that this bill has been weaponised by those on the Right in their awful campaign to police women's bodies is despicable and disgraceful. But I'm not surprised at all. They do this every time; they use the antichoice, anti-abortion playbook to push their far-right agenda. This is not a new tactic. It is old, it is tired and it comes straight from the US antichoice, far-right lobby.

The passage of this bill should be an important milestone and achievement for grieving families like Baby Priya's parents, who have stood up and shared their immense trauma to ensure that other parents don't have to go through what they have been through and that others can have the security of paid leave while they grieve and adjust. It should be a straightforward passage, where all sides of politics can feel proud. Instead, some have made it another battleground for hateful misinformation that seeks to control and shame women.

The MPs who are using this bill as an opportunity to demonise and shame women should themselves be utterly ashamed. Firstly, these men have no right to tell us what we can and cannot do with our bodies—absolutely none. Secondly, it is extraordinary that the harmful myth, the really harmful myth, that somehow women are lining up to have their pregnancies terminated the day before giving birth keeps being peddled by the Right. How utterly vile. Only a very small percentage of abortions occur after 20 weeks, and they are associated with severe medical conditions, such as the presence of genetic syndromes or major fetal abnormality, or situations where continuing the pregnancy would severely harm the mother's mental and physical health, as Dr Kirsten Black, Professor of Sexual and Reproductive Health at the University of Sydney, has explained. But that doesn't stop these MPs from politicising a deeply personal matter. They don't really care about facts. They just want control.

Well, we will not have a bar of it. Our rights are not up for debate. I have been fighting this fight along with so many in the community for a long time. I introduced the first bill to decriminalise abortion in New South Wales in 2017, and, when the archaic laws that criminalised abortion in New South Wales were finally thrown into the dustbin of history two years later, it was a proud moment for all of us who had been campaigning for decades for this change. These rights, women's rights, are always hard fought for and something we can never really take for granted in a patriarchal society, where some still want to control our bodies and our choices. Abortion is health care. Importantly, it is an issue of reproductive rights and body autonomy, and we must be unapologetic about fighting for women's rights, for human rights and for any person who needs access to reproductive health care having full and unambiguous bodily autonomy.

The MPs who have used this bill for perpetuating their barely guarded misogyny should just sit down and shut up. We have had enough.