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A couple’s campaign following the death of their newborn has inspired changes to the Fair Work Act, to help close gaps between the public and private sectors in support for bereaved parents. By Hannah Bambra.
Baby Priya’s Bill set to reform leave laws for grieving parents
Last June, a baby girl named Priya was born just shy of 25 weeks. She was a tiny figure in a crib in the neonatal intensive care unit, where her parents watched over her, day and night, suspended in hope.
“I used to call her my ‘fighter girl’ and my ‘super girl’ when she was in the NICU, encouraging her through every challenge she faced and overcame, until she couldn’t anymore,” Priya’s mother tells The Saturday Paper.
Priya died at 42 days.
Ten days after losing her, Priya’s mother got a text message from work – her pre-approved parental leave was being cancelled.
She asked her employer of 11 years if she could get “at least six weeks’ leave, for the time she was alive”. She received no response.
Her partner, who is a teacher in New South Wales, kept his parental leave. Unlike in the private sector, government-paid parental leave is protected and cannot be revoked in such situations.
Priya’s parents, who have retained their anonymity, launched a Change.org campaign in March this year to lobby the federal government to make the cancellation of paid maternity leave on infant death or stillbirth illegal.
Priya’s mother is a member of the Australian Services Union, and she turned to the union for help negotiating with her employer and backing her call to the minister for workplace relations for reform.
“Parents deserve compassion and support during a time of unimaginable grief. No parent mourning the loss of a child should be forced back to work early or face financial strain,” says Angus McFarland, ASU secretary for NSW and the ACT.
Labor responded to the growing campaign in mid April, when the then workplace relations minister, Murray Watt, said the government would move to close the loophole that had made such action possible for private sector employers. The party made an election promise to introduce federal legislation to protect grieving parents’ entitlements.
In May, Greens member of parliament Abigail Boyd also introduced a motion in NSW calling on the Australian government to amend the Fair Work Act 2009 in response to baby Priya’s mother’s advocacy in that state.
This month, Baby Priya’s Bill was introduced to federal parliament. Given signs of support from the opposition and the private sector, it is expected to pass both houses.
“I hope the opposition supports this bill, which is motivated by the courageous advocacy of Priya’s parents,” Employment Minister Amanda Rishworth tells The Saturday Paper. “I’ve been encouraged by the broad backing we’ve received from employer and employee groups.”
The proposed amendment to the Fair Work Act will apply to parents who experience stillbirth or early infant loss and have workplace arrangements for parental leave in place.
While this is widely considered to be a positive step for equalising standards, some advocates say more could be done to close the gap between entitlements for grieving parents – across gestation periods as well as sectors, states and territories, and the rural–urban divide.
In Australia, any pregnancy lost before 20 weeks is classified as a miscarriage. A loss is defined as a stillbirth at or after 20 weeks, or when the fetus weighs more than 400 grams.
The implication of this arbitrary and unnecessarily graphic definition is appalling; that bereaved parents might have to consider the physical weight of their dead baby to access their leave.
Advocates also say the bill could be extended to close other gaps between private and public sector employment. Government-funded leave also allows for “premature birth leave”, where additional time is granted from the date of the child’s birth to 37 weeks’ gestation. This allows parents to not use all their paid parental leave when a baby may not yet have come home.
Further psychosocial support and legislated bereavement leave could also be put in place for miscarriage, abortion and infertility treatment. NSW is currently the only state that explicitly provides paid miscarriage leave for its public sector employees.
The chief executive of Parents At Work, Emma Walsh, says Australia has a “patchwork of paid parental leave policies”. She also says that the government-funded scheme is one of the least generous among OECD nations.
“Not all employers offer paid parental leave and they’re not required to by law, which leaves parents solely reliant on workplace discretion,” says Walsh.
Advocates say many employers are lacking in awareness or education about the impacts of infertility, miscarriage and child loss. Priya’s mother says the topic is still taboo.
The launch of Baby Priya’s Bill coincides with the release of the Pink Elephants Support Network’s “Not just a loss” report, which finds that 75 per cent of women coping with such bereavement report feeling unsupported through their experience, and more than two thirds receive no support when told their pregnancy has ended.
The report states women in rural, regional and remote areas were found to be 60 per cent more likely to experience perinatal death compared with those in major cities, and waited, on average, three hours longer for miscarriage-related care.
“Not just a loss” refers to the “abandonment crisis” experienced after miscarriage, where “families are denied fundamental workplace protections like bereavement leave certificates that would provide time and space to process their loss”.
The report also says the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ recent rejection of Pink Elephants’ request to document early pregnancy loss in the census “exemplifies how institutional decisions render this statistically invisible” despite the scale of the problem.
It’s estimated that one in four pregnancies is lost to miscarriage and, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, six children are stillborn each day in Australia.
In September, Cathy Nguyen’s story was read aloud by the chair of the Stillbirth Foundation Australia at the South Australian Select Committee into Stillbirth. Nguyen had been told her pregnancy was healthy and low risk. “I will never forget the moment my world shattered,” she wrote.
Nguyen had to give birth to her daughter, Sage. She describes the process as brutal and the recovery as lonely, isolating and confusing.
“How can nature be so cruel? To allow me to birth death,” wrote Nguyen. “To allow me to go through nearly 30 hours of labour and end with a perineum tear and my lifeless daughter.”
Nguyen, and many others, have still had to go through all the postpartum changes that occur hormonally, emotionally and physically. Grieving mothers often have to take pills to stop their milk from coming through. Some have other children and must help them process their emotions as well.
In 2018, a federal Senate inquiry into stillbirth prompted 16 recommendations to improve prevention, research and bereavement care. As a result, the government launched $7.2 million in initiatives. These included research programs to reduce rates of stillbirth through better clinical practices and awareness. While bereavement care was part of the inquiry’s scope, however, support for grieving families has remained inconsistent.
Emma Walsh says workplaces need to be equipped to provide counselling, flexible return-to-work pathways and manager training to respond to loss sensitively.
“Embedding compassion through major life events into workplace culture benefits everyone,” she says. “Supporting parents through every stage of their journey – from fertility and pregnancy to childbirth, loss and the return to work – isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s vital for building thriving, sustainable workplaces in this country.”
Priya’s mother says she is in awe of the progress that is now under way. “Priya’s name is going to be law,” she says. “My fighter girl, my Priya, has changed the world.”
PANDA’s Pink Elephants Pregnancy Loss Helpline 1300 726 306
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on October 25, 2025 as "Baby Priya’s Bill".
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