Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I will go into a bit more detail on these issues when I move my amendment. While that may not be the government’s intention, that is exactly what is going to happen. These amendments provide for doctors to have veto over midwives. That is just the basic fact. The government can dress it up as much as they like, but that is effectively what they do.

I do not say this about all doctors, but a great many doctors have been in the media recently commenting on homebirths and claiming they are unsafe, and this is the issue we are worried about. In fact, the most recent episode quite misrepresented the findings of the study in South Australia. They spun that information and claimed that it shows that homebirths are unsafe, when, in fact, it did not show that at all.

Despite the government’s intent, these amendments essentially give doctors the right of veto over midwives. There are going to be very few doctors in Australia who will organise collaborative arrangements with midwives to provide homebirths. We discussed last night the government having to amend this legislation on a number of occasions. The first was to put in place the exemption on the NRAS so that midwives could provide homebirths without indemnity insurance. Those issues still have to be dealt with. We have two years now in which to resolve that issue. That essentially, as we discussed last night, made homebirths illegal. In fact, midwives could have been fined $30,000 for providing a homebirth. That sought to make them illegal and it was another way of stopping homebirths. These amendments could virtually have the same effect because, if a midwife cannot organise collaborative arrangements with a medical professional, they will not be able to provide services, support and homebirths.

I think this legislation will achieve to a certain extent what the government was previously trying to achieve and what a large number of medical professionals have been trying to achieve—that is, to stop homebirths. But you will not stop homebirths. A number of women will just free birth, and they have plainly said that to me. Does the government want to drive people into having unsupported homebirths, which are unsafe? Because that is what these amendments could achieve. That is why the Greens do not support these amendments.

I will move another amendment, which I will outline in more detail shortly. It will expand the organisations or places where midwives can seek to have collaborative practice arrangements rather than just with medical professionals. Essentially this legislation makes it all that more difficult for midwives to be able to arrange collaborative practices in the long term because, as I said, medical professionals will not agree to enter into those sorts of arrangements with midwives providing homebirths.

During the Senate inquiry we discussed a number of scenarios, including insurance perhaps not being available to the doctor if the doctor did enter into collaborative arrangements with a midwife providing homebirths. The department says that the insurance industry is not saying that. I think at the moment that is an open question. I accept that the department has followed that issue up. I still do not think that that issue is resolved. We have very strong concerns about what this means for the provision of midwife services, particularly for the provision of midwife services for homebirths.