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Like many West Australians, FIFO is a way of life for firebrand independent senator Fatima Payman and husband Jacob Stokes.
And like tens of thousands of WA’s FIFO families, Payman will now be dealing with an added layer of complexity to her gruelling lifestyle between Perth and Canberra by May – a baby girl.
Payman’s northern suburbs Perth home is already adorned with gifted baby clothes and toy animals ahead of the arrival of their baby, which she said they were trying for, but were shocked at the news regardless.
“I was in the [Perth] office and felt nauseous. I thought, ‘this is weird and strange’ and did a test…it was quite the surprise, but we’re very, very excited,” she said.
Payman will be the first WA Senator to give birth while serving, but will join a raft of other mums in the chamber, including new Labor senator Ellie Whiteaker, who also juggles a toddler with her state Labor MP husband David Scaife.
Stokes, who quit his job as a Labor staffer in the Cook government after Payman left the party in 2024 over its stance on Gaza, said the addition of a baby wouldn’t be anything the pair couldn’t handle after the past two years.
“We’ve been through a lot already, and this, if anything, is an exciting challenge compared to some of the other challenges we’ve had to go through,” he said.
“For me, it’s just doing what I’ve done the last two years since I left the Labor Party and that’s just being as strong a support network as I can, which, at the moment, has been making sure she sleeps, eats and drinks.”
Payman will stop travelling to Canberra from Easter and won’t return until it’s safe for her baby to fly, but she doesn’t intend to pull her workload back, which is where her former boss, Anthony Albanese, comes in.
The Prime Minister sets staffing levels in the crossbench, and Payman said she had requested more than her currently allotted five full-time staff to match her crossbench colleagues who had teams of six and seven – but had received silence to date.
She said she would write again to request extra staff to assist her in balancing her baby with her work.
“I’m definitely not letting the pregnancy or the baby hold us back, but that just means that it’s going to be a lot on the team. We’re already under-resourced, understaffed,” she said.
“I’m just hoping that the prime minister is not going to, you know, not keep us in this weird sort of limbo around resourcing and support.
“He is quite vocal in his support for modern-day Australia and working women, and being able to support them during their pregnancy and maternity leave journeys, and the paid parental leave was a huge achievement for them.
“I’m hoping as the announcement is made public he can soften a little bit and realise that as the only independent senator for WA, I need to be able to effectively do my job and represent West Australians, regardless of whether I’m having a baby and how much time I’ll need to recover post-delivery.”
Payman plans to enlist the help of Stokes and their mothers after their girl is born, but that has been complicated by the recent focus on MP travel entitlements.
Payman came in second on the list of MPs who have spent the most on family travel, which she conceded was “not great”.
“I agree it doesn’t pass the pub test, and that’s something that we’ll need to keep in mind on how we travel and how often,” she said.
The debate around Parliament’s suitability for new mothers has been raging for decades and hit a crescendo in 2017 when Greens senator Larissa Waters became the first woman to breastfeed in the chamber.
Payman said she believes as a workplace, Parliament House has come a long way for new mums, and a baby’s presence in the chamber wasn’t an alien concept.
“It’s a constant process of improving every workplace to make sure that women don’t have to choose between, do I want to keep my career, or can I start a family?” she said.
“I guess we’ll put it to the test when we write to the Prime Minister to see what he reckons.”
Hamish Hastie is WAtoday’s state political reporter and the winner of five WA Media Awards, including the 2023 Beck Prize for best political journalism.Connect via Twitter or email.From our partners
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