"I think if you were going to write a policy that supported women, that supported mothers, that supported families, you would write a policy like that ... and those who talk down that policy are doing a massive disservice to women having babies," she said of the scheme, which was devised while she was indigenous affairs adviser in Mr Abbott's office.

Reducing the issue to "rich women versus poor women" was a disgrace, she said, calling for women in federal parliament to champion the policy.

"Tony is fighting for women to have the babies they want and he's holding on to it very strongly against huge opposition because there aren't enough mums in parliament. And those who are there aren't supporting it. I think some of them probably go home at night time feeling slightly ashamed and they should ...

"It's a good policy and the Neanderthals who don't like it should really think about the women they're judging around them and the people they making choices for around them."

Ms Jones's fifth baby is due in April. She plans a month or six weeks at home, then baby will join her at work. As for breastfeeding in the chamber, she doesn't hesitate.

"If I'm in the middle of a feed and it's awake I'll just pop it under my arm and take it down to the chamber and if it's starving it'll be fed because breastfeeding is about babies being fed a lot more than it is about whether women feel like breastfeeding in public or in the chamber or anywhere else," she said. She won't get any grief from the ACT Assembly, which changed its standing orders to specifically allow breastfeeding in the chamber after Kirstie Marshall was thrown out of the Victorian parliament in 2003.

Ms Jones, 34, has three boys and a girl, the youngest is 3, the oldest is almost 9, and is not drawing the line even at five, although it seems unlikely that anyone will rival Independent Paul Osborne's record as father of seven while he was in the assembly, and now with nine children.

Ms Jones worked through all but the last, taking a year off for the youngest before she began her campaign for election in 2012. She has had sympathetic employers, including Mr Abbott, who allowed her to work as an adviser part-time. She's concerned now to hear there are few jobs for part-timers in the Coalition.

She says she will call out discrimination against breastfeeding and working mothers wherever she sees it, insisting attitudes must change.

"Babies are an absolutely normal essential basic part of women's lives and we should never make a women have to choose between work and having a baby, it's just so retrograde."

She believes it is good for the country's future if "capable, hardworking people" have more children, and says women should never believe that careers and children can't go together.

"We have senior women who have got to the top who say I couldn't have done it if I'd had children. It's just not true, ... there is no physical or mental reason why you cannot have a high powered job or a job that you love, as well as children."

Ms Jones has the advantage of a husband, army engineer Bernard Jones, who gets home at 5pm and enjoys cooking, But money has been tight – the family had a grocery bill of just $150 a week while Ms Jones was home with the third child, when she took a part-time cleaning job in the evenings to make ends meet,

The couple has a five-bedroom home in Weston. They share the home with an au pair and her mother-in-law who lives in the downstairs granny flat. Space can be tight but in Ms Jones's view, that is no bad thing.

"Kids learn to be more adaptable by having challenges like sharing rooms and they learn skills that are necessary for life," she says. "Most of us who go on to partner won't have a bedroom of their own and that throws up challenges doesn't it?"