Jim Molan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to join with Senator Malarndirri McCarthy in acknowledging the extraordinary debt that every Australian owes to each witness who submitted evidence to the stillbirth research and education select committee, and that is simply staggering. These parents who have lost a child revealed to a group of strangers the details—clinical and emotional—of their tragedy. The experiences and recommendations, with the input of clinicians and other experts, will indisputably reduce the number of future Australian families who endure this torture—and torture it is.

I volunteered for this committee because, on 12 October 2007, my wife, Anne, and I received a phone call; our daughter Sarah, then 26 years of age, had gone into labour with her and her husband Gavin's second child, a brother or sister for beautiful little Sophie, who was 16 months old at the time. Plans were made for us to hurtle across the Hay Plain to get to Nyah, in Victoria, in the next few days. Our daughter Sarah organised the last of her freezer meals before she and Gav drove into Swan Hill hospital. It hadn't been a difficult pregnancy. Sarah had a perfectly normal ultrasound less than 48 hours earlier, so it's fair to say there was much joviality and excitement anticipating Gavin's next call with an update or, if we were really lucky, with the happy news.

Sarah and Gavin were told on arrival at the hospital that there was concern for the baby, and they were rushed to emergency. They were rushed there for a scan which confirmed that the baby had died. Sarah became hysterical for a time, urging the staff to take the baby by emergency caesarean section and attempt resuscitation. Some 30 minutes later, they were composed enough—I hope I'm composed enough—to phone both sets of parents and inform us that their daughter had to be delivered normally and that the labour could not be accelerated. Emily Charlotte Sutton was born at 8.07 pm, believed to be approximately 40 hours after she had died.

The recommendations of this report will spare many Australian parents from the unimaginable grief of your baby going to the hospital mortuary instead of to the nursery, of making autopsy arrangements, of postnatal mothers being supported to walk through a cemetery to choose a plot for their baby, of a funeral with the smallest of white coffins being carried by a shell-shocked family member and of returning home to a house full of baby paraphernalia. That's just the blur of the first week or 10 days. Having found the strength to do all this, Sarah, Gavin, all our witnesses at this inquiry and every other traumatised, bereaved parent then has to find the strength to get out of bed and function each day for the rest of their lives. In many cases, families, friends and countless members of bereaved parents' communities gather magnificently around a mother, father or couple who have had a stillbirth. Love, kindness and generosity can be extended readily, but it is not necessarily guaranteed to provide a degree of comfort or appropriate support. It gives me exquisite pleasure to recognise that this report will reduce the occasions on which our families and communities endure this pain and rally in response to it.

As well as her big sister, Sophie, now 12 years old, Emily has a little brother, Angus, who is eight. Emily is loved and remembered every single day.

The committee heard about the significant and far-reaching impacts of stillbirth in Australia. As Senator McCarthy said, stillbirth affects over 2,000 Australian families every year. For every 137 women who reach 20 weeks pregnancy, one will experience a stillbirth.

This report is all about a national commitment, as our chair said. In countries where a national commitment has been made to reducing the rate of stillbirth, policies and practices have been changed and stillbirth rates have declined significantly. The committee concluded that Australia needs a consistent and coordinated approach to stillbirth research and education at a national policy level and recommended that a national stillbirth action plan be developed, with the aim of reducing the rate of stillbirth in Australia by 20 per cent over the next three years.

I would like to conclude by acknowledging the work and leadership of the chair of the committee, Senator Malarndirri McCarthy, and the secretariat of the inquiry, Sophie, and her great team, who produced excellent results. In particular, I would like to acknowledge Senator Kristina Keneally, who predicted that this would be an inquiry with no bad guys—and she has been perfectly right. This is how the parliament should work.