Thursday, 23 March 2023

 Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (09:53): In the last couple of weeks a woman was ejected from the County Court of Victoria for breastfeeding her baby. A lot of Victorians were understandably shocked by such an archaic response to a woman feeding a baby in a public space. As people know, I have breastfed three babies here in Parliament, sitting on the curb, in churches, in cafes. In fact any time my babies were hungry I fed them, because anyone who has breastfed knows that it does not matter where you are: when your baby has got to eat, they have got to eat. Little ones simply cannot wait, and feeding them is just a means of keeping them alive. Delaying breastfeeding can actually also be incredibly dangerous for the mother, leading to health conditions like mastitis, which is not nice. Preventing people from breastfeeding in public places – all it does is send a message to women that they are not welcome in public spaces, in public life, and this is unacceptable. Women should be welcome in any public space at any time.

In Victoria we do have the Equal Opportunity Act 2010, which specifically is supposed to protect pregnant and breastfeeding people in areas of public life, like work, schools, universities, shops and rental properties, but it seems there is a loophole in the law in Victoria that still allows discrimination in some public places, such as the courts. This could be fixed, so I am calling on the Labor government to fix the loophole in the law to ensure that women can breastfeed their babies anywhere and everywhere that they need to.