Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to put on the record the importance of the vital work that the Australian Breastfeeding Association do and to call on the government to end the madness around the uncertainty of funding for this vitally important organisation. A few weeks ago I received an email from Jill. She is a volunteer with the Australian Breastfeeding Association and has been for close to five years. She talked to me about the important work that she does and how long she studied to have the confidence and the knowledge to assist new mothers when they are struggling with breastfeeding. She talked to me about the fact that the funding for this organisation was in jeopardy because the Turnbull government had refused to provide ongoing funding.

I must admit that when I received this email I thought, 'This cannot be true. It would be madness, for the important work that this organisation does and the small amount of government funding that it runs on, for this to be true.' But sure enough, when we looked into it, we saw that the government had refused to guarantee ongoing funding. Since the shadow minister for health pointed this out and the Australian public expressed their outrage, the government have now very sneakily decided to extend funding for just 12 months to get them past an election, but not to guarantee the ongoing, important, good work of this organisation.

This is an organisation that has over 400 volunteer breastfeeding counsellors. They answer up to 6,000 calls every month. It is not just for new mothers that this organisation is important. The government itself says that it is committed to protecting, promoting, supporting and monitoring breastfeeding throughout Australia, and we know that it is important for these children, and indeed for the health of the community. We know that this is an important issue for the health of Australia and we know that women who are new to breastfeeding often rely upon this counselling; they rely upon this important advice. Too often it makes the difference between whether they are able to continue breastfeeding or whether they have to move on to something else. The health of these children, when they have mothers who are able to breastfeed but just need a little bit of advice and a little bit of support, is reliant upon this government providing ongoing funding.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

To those opposite who, rather than getting on board and demanding that the government provides ongoing funding, sit there and interrupt, I say: we will see the federal budget in a few weeks. We demand to see ongoing funding for the Australian Breastfeeding Association. This is not about Liberal, it is not about Labor, it is not about progressive or conservative—this is about mothers and babies and the health of Australians going forward. It would be shameful to end this funding and continue the uncertainty.