Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

The Labor Party will be supporting the Medical and Midwife Indemnity Legislation Amendment Bill 2019, which seeks to improve the operation of indemnity insurance following a first principles review. Medical indemnity insurance covers doctors, midwives and other health professionals and providers for the large compensation that may be payable to patients after provider errors. Since a major market failure in 2002, the Commonwealth has provided substantial support for the medical indemnity insurance market—around $83 million in 2018-19. This bill amends the Medical Indemnity Act 2002 and related legislation to improve the operation of the Commonwealth support. In particular, this bill introduces a requirement that all indemnity insurers must provide cover to all providers. At present this universal coverage obligation only applies to the four insurers who have contracts with the Commonwealth. This is a sensible and helpful extension.

Unfortunately, this legislation fails to fix the significant gaps in indemnity insurance for Australia's midwives. In fact, this legislation does not even attempt to deal with those. In particular, it fails to address the lack of cover for homebirths and the lack of competition and choice in other midwifery cover. Currently we do not have indemnity insurance for all homebirths. The current exemption for holding that insurance is set to expire, putting midwives in a position of uncertainty. Unless the minister addresses this issue, it could jeopardise the ability of midwives to attend homebirths. On the issue of competition, there's only one provider of indemnity insurance for midwives.

This is not an easy situation to resolve, but we call on the government to consider options to address it. The Labor Party is concerned about these issues because we believe midwives perform an incredibly important role in our health system. The last Labor government added midwives to the National Registration and Accreditation Scheme and gave midwives access to a range of Medicare and PBS items for the first time. We call on the government to give midwives the support and attention they deserve.