Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm grateful for the opportunity to speak on this bill. Growing up on a family farm just outside of Chinchilla, where my mum was the local midwife, today, as a senator for Queensland, I have a very special interest in medical and midwifery services for regional Australia, especially in Queensland. As I noted in my maiden speech, these essential services are contracting away from many towns and small communities in regional centres around Queensland. While Chinchilla has a hospital, it's a hospital without any reliable maternity services. So much for better access to essential services in my home town! How can this work? How can families plan for what should be a joyous time? I'm grateful for the leadership of the Prime Minister and for the coalition government's determination to lead the fight for rural and regional Australians to ensure that they receive their fair share of government funding, services and support.

Improving essential services in the bush starts with this bill, the Medical and Midwife Indemnity Legislation Amendment Bill 2019. As a responsible Commonwealth government, we must do all that we can to enable privately practising doctors, health professionals and midwives to take up the slack in neglected communities, and that means nationwide access to affordable professional indemnity insurance. Currently, under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law Act, midwives are required to hold appropriate professional indemnity insurance in order to be registered. At the present time, an exemption to this requirement applies to privately practising midwives who provide labour and delivery services for homebirths up until December 2019. According to the Australian College of Midwives, most midwives will be covered by their employer. However, self-employed midwives will need to arrange their own insurance.

A recent submission from the Australian College of Midwives to the First Principles Reviews of the Medical Indemnity Insurance Fund concluded that indemnity insurance was a barrier for privately practising midwives and has resulted in the loss of a number of excellent privately practising midwives from the profession. Stepping up to the plate on this issue, the Australian government has agreed to work with indemnity insurers, representative peak bodies and practitioners to improve Commonwealth support for medical indemnity arrangements. Taken collectively, the initiatives in this bill will aim to: simplify the legislative structure that supports effective and affordable medical indemnity insurance; ensure universal cover to medical practitioners; expand government support for high-cost and exceptional claims made against healthcare professionals; clarify eligibility for run-off cover schemes; streamline reporting obligations; and monitor capacity. This is an impressive list of reforms. These reforms should support the long-term stability and sustainability of a sector that is so vital to improving equality of access to reliable maternity care in regional communities.

The World Health Organization has announced 2020 as the year of the nurse and the midwife. I trust that the Senate will support this bill and, in doing so, provide for the long-term stability and affordability of medical indemnity premiums for our midwives and medical practitioners around Australia to help ensure better equality of health care and patient safety, irrespective of postcode. I commend the bill to the Senate.