The decision to pull subsidies from childcare has caused alarm in the sector - especially because it is the first place the government cut support. 7am is a daily show from The Monthly and The Saturday Paper. It’s produced by Ruby Schwartz, Atticus Bastow, and Michelle Macklem.

Early in the pandemic, Dani Dafoulis tried to save some money by pulling her two kids out of childcare to look after them while she worked from home. It was “just impossible”, says the Geelong high-school teacher, to try to teach while balancing the care of a two-year-old and a five-year-old.

"As a pregnant woman going through it, it was a different experience in that a lot of the personal stories and experiences you were hearing were about milestones that you were readying for or experiencing," Boyd told BuzzFeed News on Tuesday, just hours before the debate on the proposed legislation.

Women account for an average of just 33% of the seats in federal parliament. The Labor party has had quotas to improve female representation since the 1990s and the Coalition has voluntary targets. On Wednesday two senior female politicians in the Liberal party said the Coalition's record on delivering for women "far exceeded Labor" even though less than a quarter of federal Liberal MPs are women compared to almost half of Labor politicians.

"My mum is allowing me to share this story for the first time today ... in the hope that no woman will ever experience what she did, and that we change this legislation," the Labor MP told Queensland's parliament on Tuesday night, during a debate on a bill that would remove abortion from the state's criminal code.

"I was due on my own birthday which I thought was the best present ever," the Labor MP told Queensland Parliament on Tuesday night during a debate on proposed legislation to decriminalise abortion. "I was delighted to give my daughter a sibling."

Share On more Share On more "I cannot stay silent anymore," the member for Newtown told the NSW Legislative Assembly on Tuesday afternoon. Leong said too many of her party's resources, and too much energy, had been spent trying to investigate and defend "one man and his unacceptable behaviour".

"It was a very different time and I was 19 and very naive, so I had no idea because I didn't want to discuss it and talk openly about it," the now 46-year-old Canberra mother told BuzzFeed News. "It was all so clandestine and terrible."

As the national conversation about personal safety and violence against women continues in the wake of Melbourne woman Eurydice Dixon's murder and the more than 30 other women who have been killed this year, a Victorian politician has put forward his own solution.

Ann-Maree Imrie conceived quickly and was told she had a healthy pregnancy. But at six-and-a-half months gestation, the Sydney mother noticed a change of movement and went in for a check-up. "The sonographer just looked at us and said 'I'm not able to find a foetal heartbeat'," Sydney mother Imrie told BuzzFeed News. "Obviously your world comes crashing down and then you're told to pick a day where they can induce you and you can give birth."

The report came after an inquiry established by Labor senator Kristina Keneally, who spoke to BuzzFeed News in April about her stillborn daughter Caroline. Keneally “confessed” there were times she grew “incredibly angry” during the hearings. “The anger I felt wasn’t directed at anything other than just grief that babies had died in this country when we could have saved them,” Keneally told the Senate on Tuesday night.

"Scrapping it will make sanitary products more affordable for women and will end an unnecessary inequity in our taxation system." "The tampon tax is unfair and discriminatory," Plibersek wrote in a letter sent late Thursday afternoon to Scott Morrison.

The cabinet minister, who will not recontest her Melbourne seat of Higgins at the election to be held before the end of May, said enduring a miscarriage in parliament house without the support of her husband Jon was difficult. "I never ever want that to happen again," O'Dwyer told News Corp, adding that she wanted to try for a third child.

Labor has just announced that if it wins at the next election it will scrap the 10% goods and services tax (GST) on sanitary products because they're not "luxury" items and are necessary for reproductive health. Tampons and sanitary products would move into the GST-free essential health items category alongside condoms and lubricant under a Shorten-Labor government.

Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young in the Senate chamber at Parliament House in Canberra, Tuesday May 8, 2018. Hanson-Young accused Liberal Democrat politician David Leyonhjelm of yelling "stop shagging men, Sarah" across the floor of the Senate during a debate about whether women should protect themselves against violence with pepper spray on Friday.

Anning's motion, debated on Thursday, acknowledged the "recent spate of horrific violent crimes against women" and called on the Australian government to allow the "importation of pepper spray, mace and tasers for individual self-defence", and on state governments to legalise the carrying of such weapons by women for "personal protection".

Sky News has suspended a producer for allowing an offensive comment made by a male politician to a fellow female senator to be highlighted on screen. Liberal Democrat politician David Leyonhjelm has not denied yelling "stop shagging men, Sarah" across the floor of the Senate during a debate on Friday about whether women should protect themselves against violence with pepper spray.

The push to remove Australia's "tampon tax" found an unlikely ambassador this week when senator David Leyonhjelm used Senate estimates to revisit the question of why women pay the 10% goods and services (GST) tax on feminine hygiene products. "The section 38.45 of the GST act makes medical aides and devices GST-free provided that they're widely used by people with an illness or a disability," Leyonhjelm said, pointing out that incontinence pads are free of the GST but sanitary pads are not.

"He is, for lack of a better word — and I really apologise for this — I'm thankful that my daughter is home in bed still and not up for school — he is slut-shaming me," Hanson-Young told ABC's Radio National this morning. "That is what he is doing." Leyonhjelm has not denied yelling the words across the floor of the Senate during a debate on Friday about whether women should protect themselves against violence with pepper spray and has since refused to apologise for the slur. Hanson-Young told

Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull announced a ban on ministers having sexual relations with their staff earlier this month, in response to the revelations that deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce not only had an affair with his much younger former employee, but that she was expecting his fifth child.