Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Four weeks in some cases, Senator Adams tells me, so that they could use this medical assistance to have their baby. But these women wanted that to be the default position. They only wanted to do that if some harm was likely to happen to themselves or to their baby. They are very sensible and, in the main, very fit, active women that we are talking about. They are farmers. They are not going to risk their child, but they are fit healthy women. They want to have a midwife who can assist them and who can be confident that she is not going to be sued by anybody and that she can do the job that needs to be done—and that there will be more midwives coming up to replace those as people age. This is a constant problem in many of our not just remote areas but smaller rural areas where it is difficult to get a GP and where families have to be broken up often for weeks and weeks on end—four weeks as Senator Adams mentioned—so that the baby can be born in a venue considered to be medically suitable surroundings.

The other group that is particularly affected by this problem is Aboriginal women. It has been put to me that many Aboriginal women are having babies without any assistance whatsoever except from older women in their group. They are simply frightened to see obstetricians, gynaecologists and GPs who are, in the main, white and obviously strange and obviously are going to examine them in what could be considered culturally inappropriate ways without any training to support them in undertaking that examination. One of our solutions is for there to be more Indigenous doctors—GPs, obstetricians and gynaecologists—but it is not just about having more. It is also about recognising that in some cultures, and the Aboriginal culture qualifies because of the remoteness from hospitals of many Aboriginal people, the remoteness and cultural sensitivity mean that people would be far more comfortable with a midwife to deliver the child, a midwife to support them and a midwife to accompany them if in the unlikely circumstance they needed to go to a hospital for that delivery to take place. The coalition will be supporting this legislation because it is an improvement on where we have been. We hope that we can have more and better amendments for this legislation as the program proceeds.