I acknowledge the Turrbal people and pay my respects to elders, past present and emerging.

In doing so, at this conference, it is important to remember that our Indigenous community suffers from stillbirth at higher rates than the broader population, in fact 42 per cent higher. Just as closing the gap of Indigenous disadvantage more broadly needs to be a much higher national priority than it has been, ensuring that more Indigenous children are born also born alive needs to be part of our conversation about stillbirth.

I was very keen to accept your invitation to launch your conference today, together with Senator Keneally.

For a number of reasons. To thank the Centre for the work it does in this important field. Also to thank those of you in the audience for your tireless advocacy, including the Stillbirth Foundation. I was delighted to meet with CEO Kate Lynch last week.

And also to update the sector on Labors approach to the issue of stillbirth following both the election and the recent Senate Inquiry.

I hope you will agree that the Senate Inquiry was a good process, with a good report.

It provided opportunity to raise stillbirth higher up the ladder of the national debate, to elevate in the health policy agenda.

And so many parents and advocates showed courage in coming forward to make submissions, give evidence and attend hearings. I would like to give thanks and appreciation for that courage.

Almost 2,200 Australian children are stillborn every year. Six a day. It is the biggest cause of infant death in our country today.

Once every four hours a family has to deal with the tragedy that their child didnt get the chance to take a breath.

With 2,200 stillbirths a year, stillbirth is a health issue nearing equivalence to suicide in terms of raw numbers.

Rightly, we as a society have been focusing on suicide and metal health to try and drive the numbers, and the loss and the unspeakable grief, down.

The scale of that tragedy should spur the nation into a concerted effort to reduce the rate of stillbirth.

And it needs to be noted that just as the social determinants of health more broadly are very strong in Australia, so stillbirth rates are higher for some groups in our society.

Of course, this should be a source of outrage. But I also see it as a reminder that well targeted education, research and investment can achieve the types of result we so desperately need.

For mothers in the highest socioeconomic quintile, the rate of stillbirths per 1,000 births is 5.7. In the lowest quintile its 7.6, 33 per cent higher.

And in major cities the stillbirth rate is 6.5. In very remote areas it is 13.6, more than double the rate.
As I said, the Committee did a very important job.

I want to acknowledge the work of Senator Malarndirri McCarthy, who chaired the inquiry.

Of course, Senator Kristina Keneally who instigated it it simply wouldnt have happened without her.

And Senator Catryna Bilyk who was such an important member of the Committee.

Stillbirth doesnt discriminate on party lines, and I also want to acknowledge former Liberal Senators Jim Molan and Lucy Gichuhi, as well as Greens Senator Janet Rice, for their work on the Committee.

Importantly the Committee Inquiry allowed some of the members to tell their own story.

This is important because it reminded families affected by stillbirth know that they are not alone.

That there are people in Canberra who understand in the most real sense possible that the grief of stillbirth is real, continues for ever, and has been made worse in many cases by society and authorities not showing enough sensitivity to families who have suffered.

Kristina has spoken about her and Ben losing Caroline and our colleague Senator Catryna Bilyk has shared the story of her and her husband Robert losing Timothy.

Catryna wrote that:
Thirty-six years after his birth and death, not a day goes by when my husband and I dont think about him.
Following Timothys death, a number of people told me and my husband to try and forget about it and just get on with our lives.

This struck a chord with me because of my familys experiences.

Im one of four boys. One of four brothers.

But only two of us are alive today.

In fact, only two of us came home from hospital.

My Mum went to hospital four times to give birth. But only left twice with a baby.

One of my brothers was stillborn. The other, Douglas lived for a short time in the world.

This was in an era when grieving families were treated appallingly.

My Mum wasnt allowed to hold her babies. She wasnt allowed to attend the burial of her babies.

She wasnt even told where they were buried. She had to find that out for herself many years later.

Mum is 82 now. But I know she grieves for her boys to this day.

Of course she does.

As every mother does. As every father does. As every family does.

But of course, those of us in public office sharing our stories, showing affected community members that they are not alone, elevating the issue in public debate and drawing attention to the issue is not enough.

More needs to be done.

As the Senate Committee report highlighted, despite medical advances, despite the huge progress in tackling issues like SIDS, our stillbirth rates per thousand births remain stubbornly and frankly unacceptably high.

I know thats why the Committee focussed on research in to the causes of Stillbirth and education on techniques that can reduce the incidence of stillbirth.

I was very glad that the Government recently adopted all the recommendations of the Senate Inquiry.

It is a huge testament to the advocates in this room that the Government has accepted all 16 of the Committees recommendations.

But of the 16, 13 have been agreed only in principle usually meaning that a government wants to do more work before implementing change.

The details of the Governments response make that clear.

By my count the Government has referred five recommendations to the states and territories via the Australian Health Ministers Advisory Council.

Another five recommendations are to be considered when developing the National Action Plan.

Three recommendations will be considered separately within Government.

And two recommendations have been referred to independent experts the Medical Services Advisory Committee and the National Health and Medical Research Council.

In and of themselves, those processes arent bad things. Rigorous implementation of the Committees recommendations is what we should all be aiming for.

But those processes do come with the risk of stalling the momentum that the Senate inquiry and all of you here have created.

Put simply, we cant let the Committees recommendations get bogged down in bureaucracy and blame-shifting.

When the Government does something good, they will have my support and praise in doing so, as they do for accepting the reports recommendations.

But of course, we will also hold them to account, appropriately, for progress and ensure that adopting the recommendations of the Inquiry doesnt become a simple tick and flick exercise.

Labor will give every support to the Government in doing what is necessary to see the reports recommendations implemented.

Today, Ive written to the five Labor Health Ministers around Australia to urge them to work with the federal Government to implement the Committees recommendations.

I wanted the governments of Victoria, Western Australia, the ACT, the Northern Territory and of course Queensland to know that stillbirth is a priority for their Labor colleagues in Canberra.

Cooperation between the Commonwealth and the states and territories will be crucial to implementing the Senate inquirys recommendations particularly those that have been referred to the Australian Health Ministers Advisory Council:
To develop a national data set on perinatal mortality;
To increase the number of perinatal pathologists that can undertake stillbirth autopsies;
To establish national stillbirth research funding priorities;
To develop a national, culturally appropriate continuity of care model for maternity services;
And to develop protocols for public hospitals and community health services on dealing with stillbirth.

Ive also written to the Medical Services Advisory Committee and the National Health and Medical Research Council, which have been charged with considering the Senate Committees recommendations on a Medicare item for stillbirth autopsies and longer stillbirth research funding cycles.

Labor deeply respects the independence and evidence-based nature of the MSAC and the NHMRC. But I wanted both of those committees to know that the interest in these recommendations is strong and bipartisan.

Labors interest will also be ongoing. Well use every opportunity we get to ensure that the Committees recommendations are implemented.

As a start, Labor Senators will use the Senate Estimates process to question the Department of Health on progress. That means well get a progress report this October, next February, next May, and so on for as long as it takes to see the recommendations fully implemented.

But, also, we should see the Senate Inquiry recommendations as the beginning not the end, a floor to our efforts not a ceiling.

We should keep stillbirth high in the national health policy agenda and we should be looking for ways of bringing down stillbirth rates and improving support for grieving families.

This brings me to one point, which was not traversed in the Senate Inquiry, but I think needs to be dealt with and needs to be dealt with urgently.

As some in this room know all too well, parents of stillborn children who are eligible for Family Tax Benefits receive the Stillborn Baby Payment.

It is around $2,000, and is designed to help parents cope with the tragic costs of having a stillborn child like funerals and burials. It is equivalent to the Newborn Upfront Payment and the Newborn Supplement.

But, under our social security system if you lose a young baby and are eligible receive Family Tax Benefits, you receive a bereavement payment of 14 weeks of the tax benefit to help you with the costs of the bereavement. For an average family this equates to about $1500.

But you are only eligible for this payment if your babys heart beats after birth. If it beats once, you receive a payment, if your baby is born without a heartbeat, you dont.

This is wrong.

Now lets be crystal clear, no amount of money can take grief away and it is not intended to.

But our social security system recognises that grieving parents can do with a little extra support and help with unexpected costs and reduced earning capacity that go with losing a loved baby.

That support should apply equally for a family that has lost a baby who has lived briefly beyond child birth and a baby who hasnt made it through child birth.

The grief is the same. The support should be the same.

It is frankly a throwback to the attitude of the era that Mother and many of you have had to deal with, that somehow a stillbirth is not equivalent to the death of others.

And so, we are calling today for this anomaly to be fixed.

We are calling on the Government to equalise the payment.

Labor estimates it would cost $2.1 million a year. A small price to pay for fixing a fundamental inequity in the system.

In conclusion, I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak here at the opening of your important National Forum.

I look forward to working with you to elevate the prominence and priority of reducing stillbirth rates in our national health policy agenda.

I look forward to coming back and addressing future fora to help do so.

But more importantly, I look forward to coming back and celebrating success with you.

We know its possible. Death rates in so many areas have come down so dramatically in the last twenty years, but only with huge effort: from the community, the research sector and governments.

Twenty years ago, reducing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome seemed like a huge task. It seemed like it because it was. But it was still achieved.

We need a similar effort with stillbirth. Im confident that a similar effort will achieve similar results.

Thank you for everything you have done and will do to achieve this most worthy of goals.

You will have an enthusiastic friend, collaborator and supporter in me.