Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that inadequate funding and lack of workforce planning has closed or restricted many maternity and reproductive health services around the country, particularly in remote and regional areas; and

(b) calls on the Health Minister and National Cabinet to urgently work to resolve the maternity and reproductive healthcare crisis and ensure all families can access quality care across Australia.

You don't need to look very far to find a recent story about the healthcare crisis—waiting times for appointments, lack of access to basic health services, cost of services forcing families to make a decision about whether to go to the doctor or whether to pay the rent, the availability of medicines and burnout amongst healthcare staff. All of these things are felt even more acutely in rural and remote areas.

It's a crisis affecting all areas of health care and all areas of the country, but today I'd like to focus on the impacts on maternity and reproductive healthcare services in my home state of Queensland. Last year the Greens initiated an inquiry into barriers to accessing sexual maternity and reproductive health services and education across Australia. That inquiry has received about 2,000 submissions, which is a testament to the importance of this issue to so many. When the hearings kick off in a few weeks time I'll look forward to hearing more about the experiences that people are having across this country and finding solutions—and then begging the government to implement them.

Two key principles of the national consensus framework for rural maternity services were that women should have access to safe maternity care as close as possible to where they live and that any decisions about the development, sustainability, downgrading or closure of rural maternity services must be evidence based, transparent, subject to independent impact assessment and taken in consultation with the local community. It sounds good, but none of those principles are being achieved in Queensland.

In June 2019, a Queensland rural maternity task force highlighted the need for action in workforce planning and resourcing to address barriers to access. The report opens with this observation:

Every day in Queensland, rural and remote women leave family and business, travel long distances on rough roads often without the security of mobile phone coverage, and endure financial, social, and emotional hardship just to access the maternity care that urban people have on their doorstep.

That task force made a series of recommendations. The President of the Rural Doctors Association of Queensland, Dr Matt Masel, has said that not only has there been little progress but, in fact, the inequity confronting rural and remote women has only worsened.

Maternity units remain under considerable strain across my state. The Biloela and Gladstone hospital maternity wards have been on bypass for many months, forcing families to travel a significant distance to Rockhampton just to have their babies. My Gladstone based colleague, Senator Allman-Payne, is going to talk a lot more about that situation and the devastating impact it's having on the families. Despite the desperate pleas to the Queensland Department of Health, it looks like the women in the Gladstone community and in Biloela will be waiting until at least midyear before they can give birth in their own towns.

Meanwhile, staffing issues threaten to derail plans to resume the delivery of babies at Cooktown hospital and to establish a birthing service at Weipa hospital. Doctors are concerned that staff shortages could see restrictions on obstetrics at Innisfail Hospital. For many First Nations women in northern Queensland, these are familiar stories. Far too many First Nations women and pregnant people are forced to travel to larger centres to give birth away from country and away from family support.

This crisis in maternity healthcare access is replicated in access to reproductive health care. Too often, whether or not someone can get unbiased, timely advice about their options and, if they choose an abortion, access to safe, supportive abortion care depends on their postcode. Abortion care is health care and it should be accessible to all those who need it, no matter where they live or how much money they have in their bank account.

In Townsville and Rockhampton, Marie Stopes had been the only provider of surgical abortions for many years. In 2021, the service closed. They told me that it closed because they couldn't get the financial support they needed from the government to keep the doors open. Since then, women and pregnant people living in Townsville have had to travel hundreds of kilometres to Brisbane, generally, often at huge expense, to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. They only have a small window in which they can do so legally.

In October last year the Queensland government gave $1 million to the Townsville Hospital and health services to restore surgical termination services to the region to try to refill that gap, but it was announced last week that those services will be delayed again, until at least mid-March, while Townsville Hospital recruits the necessary staff. For pregnant people in the region who are nearing the 14-week limit for surgical abortions, that additional delay will mean the difference between accessing an abortion locally and having to travel to Brisbane and needing the funds to do so.

The additional stress, uncertainty, cost and risks that the lack of services is causing pregnant people in regional Queensland is unacceptable. We cannot have a situation where people facing an unwanted pregnancy can only access safe and supportive abortion care if they have the resources to travel. Likewise, we can't have a situation where people feel forced to elect a caesarean birth to minimise their risks. We shouldn't have a situation where families who have been supported by a midwife throughout pregnancy are forced to give birth in a distant hospital without continuing that midwife support or where parents from First Nations and culturally diverse communities are separated from their families into a daunting, unfamiliar and clinical environment at a time when they most need cultural support.

We need immediate and long-term solutions to address maternity and reproductive healthcare access issues. We need comprehensive and system-wide planning of rural maternity services, including workforce rotations. We need abortion in public hospitals. We need more recruitment and retention initiatives and incentives, better work flow management and funding to make it happen. We need to expand Medicare coverage for midwifery services and home births to give families more choice about how they birth. Bundled funding and continuity-of-care models have been recommended in the women-centred care strategy and by the participating midwives task force in the previous MBS review, and we need to start listening. This government needs to start listening. We need more birthing-on-country initiatives led by Aboriginal community-controlled health organisations. Services need to be designated to meet the needs of diverse communities in consultation with the communities they serve. We also know that attracting doctors and midwives to regional areas is made harder by the lack of housing, the lack of schools and the lack of social infrastructure.

Improving the lives of people in the regions demands a holistic approach. We need action. I know that this is an issue that the Minister for Women, Senator Gallagher and the Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care, the Hon. Ged Kearney, take seriously, and I look forward to working with them and any member in this place to tackle those barriers that are preventing women from accessing the health care they need when and where they need it.

Women have been waiting far too long to get access to basic health care. The situation is getting worse, and we deserve better.

Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I listened carefully to the contribution of Senator Waters. As a party that has made quotas for the representation of women in Australia just part of doing business, I am very proud to stand here as a member of the Labor Party with so many women in my caucus. We discuss all of these issues at length and are here to represent women right across the country—women with a wide range of views on many matters. Senator Waters indicated in the motion before the Senate that there are issues such as inadequate funding and a lack of workforce planning that have closed or restricted many maternity and reproductive health services around the country. She highlights in particular remote and regional areas. I say to people who might be listening to this contribution, as the Senate draws to the close of its first week of work here, that we have a mountain of work to do as an incoming government. We're approaching nine months now, but we've got nearly 10 years of failed health policy to undo and have to reconstruct a path forward for Australians in terms of giving them equitable access to health.

I did undertake, shortly after the arrival of the Abbott government, 52 hearings around the country for the select health committee. There was a massive reduction in funding for national partnership health agreements, which through a flow-on effect through the community led to the massive erosion that followed in community health care. I can remember in the region where I live on the Central Coast just an indicator of what was happening around the rest of the country. Because the federal government had squibbed it, because Prime Minister Abbott took money out—and that was just the beginning of the money drain that was characteristic of the previous government—the state governments made decisions to keep the hospitals open but they absolutely demolished community health.

As a woman and, happily, as a woman who's able to have children and delights in my motherhood of my now grown children, I was in a position where there was no impact directly on me in terms of access to maternity services. But I know that on the Central Coast one of the programs that was withdrawn and pulled apart was pre- and postnatal care for First Nations young women. That was one of the first casualties when the relationships between state and federal governments broke down by the action of the former Prime Minister of Australia, Mr Abbott, when he was elected. That was just the start of the wrecking ball through health brought by Mr Abbott, then followed by Mr Turnbull and—what can we say of the man who brought up the end of the regime!—Mr Morrison. The consequences are with us now—nine years long.

Nine months in, I want to put on the record an announcement that was made, that was brought to fruition by this government, which is doing what it said it would do for Australian people, and that is our declaration today from Minister Clare, the Minister for Education; Minister Butler, the Minister for Health and Aged Care; and my good friend Emma McBride, the Assistant Minister for Rural and Regional Health, about wiping the debt for rural and remote doctors and nurses practitioners. That is going to have a very significant impact on access for women in regional and rural Australia.

This was the Higher Education Support Amendment (2022 Measures No. 1) Bill 2022. It doesn't sound like it has much to do with the topic we're discussing today, which is improved access to health care, particularly with a focus on women, but this is the reality of good government doing the work of government in the national interest. It responds to concerns raised by Senator Waters about the need for immediate and long-term strategies and funding to address the crisis that we have in the workforce. Essentially, what happened today and what became law in Australia is that a doctor or a nurse practitioner who lives and works in rural and remote Australia will have their HELP debt wiped under legislation, as a result of the action of the Albanese government fulfilling our commitments made to the Australian people prior to the election—that we would begin the task of redressing the terrible, terrible state in which the former government left the health services of this nation. So, for those who are listening, you may know a doctor, you may know a nurse or you may know somebody who's engaged in study or wanting to engage in study. This is an important program because doctors and nurse practitioners who choose to live and work in the places that need them, particularly in rural and regional settings, will have most of their HELP debt reduced or wiped.

The HELP debt reduction for a doctor or nurse practitioner will depend on the length of their course of study and the amount of outstanding HELP debt they have when they commence providing eligible services in an eligible location. There will be a significant investment of Australian taxpayers' dollars in this redress of a massive failure by the previous government. So the fact is that doctors who live and work in rural and remote parts of Australia could save on average $70,000 and a nurse practitioner could save up to $20,000. So, if they work in a remote or a very remote town for a time period half the length of their course, they would have their entire HELP debt wiped.

I know communities. I've been to communities in remote and very remote towns not just in New South Wales, particularly in the seat of Parkes—and I'm talking about places like Lightning Ridge, Bourke, Wilcannia and out in Broken Hill, where there is an incredible challenge in attracting and retaining health professionals—but also in Western Australia, visiting communities around Broome and as far over as Halls Creek in the west and the eastern Kimberley. The access to services is so diabolical, with a workforce that is just flown in and flown out, that many of the First Nations representatives who gave evidence to the committee—and I'm very mindful of the great work done there with former Greens senator Rachel Siewert—described health professionals and 'white Toyotas'. That was their generic term. That's all they knew about them—they'd see white Toyotas arriving and white Toyotas leaving, and no continuity of care.

I know, as a woman, how much of my life plan was built on the hope that I might become a mother. When I fell pregnant I was absolutely delighted to be able to access continuous health care for the course of my pregnancy, and to be confident that in my early maternity my child would be cared for and that I would be able to get access to services. This is no longer the lived reality of people, whether they're in remote and regional towns or even an hour-and-a-half out of major cities. So broken is the health system after nine years of Liberal Party and National Party wrecking that people cannot even get into see the doctor.

Programs like I am reporting to the Senate today, which relieve people of their HELP debt, are going to make a very big difference to the way in which young people might consider how they would build a professional future in medicine to provide not just maternity care but also child care and, around the edges of that, I dare say, a little bit of aged care as well. If a doctor or a nurse practitioner decides to move to a large, medium or small rural town for a period equal to the whole length of their course, they also have their entire HELP debt waived. An eligible place for a period equivalent to half the time required is eligible for half the applicable debt reduction. How many doctors is this expected to attract? I'm pleased to report to the Senate and to Senator Waters—who I'm sure is very interested in the outcomes and not just the description of the problem—that this will attract about 850 doctors and nurse practitioners every single year. That's what's anticipated. This has to be music to the ears of people in regional and rural Australia. They know things are absolutely desperate.

I've spoken to many, many women in hospitals, to staff in hospitals talking about their families, and to people that I've met in the seats of Parkes, Farrer and the Riverina—but particularly up in Parkes—where they need to move into a motel accommodation in Dubbo up to a month before their delivery date to actually be ready to get into the care they need. By the time I had my third child, I was little more comfortable about the whole process, but let me tell you: for every woman who is blessed to have a first pregnancy, the care that you receive is something you will never forget. Being able to access that care is a critical part of the survival of your child and your mental health and wellbeing in what can be a tumultuous part of your life.

People have needed access to health services for a very, very long time. What's shocking is that the government of Australia between 2013 and 2022 took away the rights of Australians to access the health care that they deserve. Every time we pay our taxes, our tax dollars are an investment in our country and the future of our country, and we have a right to expect that basic things will not be eroded by the government we elect, yet that is exactly what happened under the former government.

I'm delighted that this particular piece of legislation went through today and will move on to assent. This is a fantastic outcome. And, as I said before, this is a sign of the government showing up to do its day job. Australians are out working, living and doing all the things they do as great citizens of this country. They expect the government to come in and do things that will make their lives better, not worse. We know that this particular incentive to bring 850 doctors and nurse practitioners into the workforce in regional and rural Australia is a signature, immediate and long-term policy decision enacted by the will of this parliament and led by Mr Albanese, Minister Butler, Minister McBride and Minister Clare. They got together; they figured it out. They figured out what would help Australians—not what would harm Australians. I dare say that, as a result of this initiative, my sisters across the nation, the women of Australia, will significantly benefit.

In speaking about sexual and reproductive health, we're speaking about the rights of all Australians being a key priority for the Australian government, and, for women, access to an abortion is an issue that's captured much of the public space and column inches. I also want to stand, though, as a woman of faith, alongside other women of multiple faiths, who might have a different view about abortion. Access to an abortion for all Australian women in our civil society is a very important thing. But there are people who might not hold that view, people who desperately want assistance to maintain their pregnancy, and that is an important consideration. That must be part of what the government undertakes and what senators undertake as we move forward. We live in a multicultural, multifaith, vibrant, pluralist democracy. There are multiple views about reproductive health to which we should always be sensitive, because that reflects our rich diversity. So, as a woman of faith, as a Catholic woman, I urge that committee to look at access to pregnancy care in the fullest sense. Every single possible permutation needs to be given fair and proper consideration.

I close by thanking Senator Waters for bringing forward this matter for discussion today. I am very glad that as a member of a government I'm able to stand here and—unlike the case so often in the last nine years—not make excuses about failures but put on the record a legislative success that is about building a better workforce to give Australians everywhere, including in regional Australia, a much better chance to access the health care that they deserve.

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Health and Aged Care) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, today stand to talk to the motion that's been moved by Senator Waters. I thank her for moving the motion about health care in rural and regional Australia, and the health care that rural and regional Australian women in particular deserve. I'm sure that you will agree, Senator Waters, that access to health care and other services should not be determined by the postcode in which you were born in or in which you choose to live.

In Australia we pride ourselves on equity. But we know that, unfortunately, there are challenges in rural and regional Australia that make healthcare service delivery much more challenging. We know there are fewer resources that are applied out there as a result of the sparser populations. We know that that results in limited availability of the healthcare professionals that are so needed, and they include our obstetricians and our gynaecologists, our paediatricians and our midwives, and all the other amazing healthcare workers that support those health professionals, in assisting Australian women who live outside metropolitan areas through their pregnancy and the birth of their children.

Sadly, we do also know that there is a poorer health status and there are poorer outcomes for those living in rural and regional Australia. And, of course, when they need to get additional levels of care, they have to travel great distances. So we know that it is extraordinarily important that we apply innovation to any of the decisions that we make, to meet the needs of rural, regional and remote Australians, and of rural, remote and regional women, because the application of a one-size-fits-all model, whether it be in health care or aged care, is not going to work in rural and regional Australia. So we must stop focusing on city-centric models of care, and we must make sure that we understand the nuances that exist in rural, regional and remote Australia, not the least of which are the challenges facing many of our Indigenous communities, because we know they, too, are struggling with access to the kinds of maternity and health services that people in the city probably take for granted.

Before moving on to the specifics of the motion that's before us, I'd also like to acknowledge Senator O'Neill's contribution and thank her for, probably unwittingly, acknowledging the good government that was previously the government of this nation, the coalition government. It was actually the coalition government who put forward the waiving of HECS debts for those rural and regional doctors and nurses, a part of our policy which the Labor government copycat adopted. I think Senator O'Neill should probably look back a little bit further than the last five minutes, to realise that many of the initiatives that are currently being enacted by this government are actually just copycat initiatives of those that were put forward by the previous government.

Nonetheless, I'm sure the most important thing is that doctors and nurses in rural and regional Australia are being provided additional incentives to go to rural and regional Australia, because we absolutely know that so far there has been very little, if anything, in terms of assistance for rural and regional Australia in the healthcare sector. In fact, most of the initiatives that have been put in place by this government have had a detrimental impact on rural and regional Australia. For context, I'll provide some examples of that.

The very first decision of the new health minister that I became aware of was the decision to expand the distribution priority areas, that previously had been focused on rural and regional Australia, to allow doctors to move to what was referred to as MM2 areas. This means that overseas trained doctors—or international medical graduates, as they're currently called—are no longer required to do a stint in rural, regional or remote Australia before they move back into metropolitan areas. They can now move immediately, straight to our metropolitan areas, and start practising.

This has meant not only that any new IMGs, international medical graduates, who come into the country no longer have to go to rural and regional Australia but that those already in rural and regional Australia can move to the city. Sadly, we have found, time and time again, that doctors who were previously operating and practising in rural and regional areas have taken the easy option and moved into the outer metropolitan areas, often leaving their communities with no doctor at all. Next week, in estimates, we'll prosecute a number of these areas where we have seen that happen.

The reality is that rural, regional and remote Australia is the canary in the coalmine when it comes to challenges, in many areas, not the least of which is health care. Right now, we know that workforce shortages is the most significant issue impacting our care sector—whether it be health care, aged care or disability care—right the way across the country. It is hitting hardest in rural, regional and remote Australia. What we are saying to this government is it is absolutely essential that you address the cause of the problem. We need some urgency put into addressing the workforce shortages that we're seeing. We know that unless we deal with the issue of workforce shortages, we are not going to be able to deal with many of the other issues that are currently before our health system.

To that end, it was extraordinarily distressing to find out that—whether it was by design or by incompetence—the minister for immigration failed to list the 887 skilled regional migration visas on the priority list. We welcomed the government's decision to prioritise—as we had—healthcare workers, whether they be doctors, nurses or care workers, and education workers, most predominantly teachers, by fast-tracking the visa applications of these people coming into the country. We knew that we had challenges as a result of COVID. Of course, we didn't have migration for many, many months—in fact, for a couple of years—and so we welcomed the fast-tracking of these visa applications. But we then found, by accident or design, that 887 skilled regional visas were excluded from the priority list, basically relegating doctors, nurses, teachers and care workers—who would otherwise have chosen to go to rural, regional and remote Australia to undertake their caring responsibilities—to the bottom of the visa pile.

In my own home town, I've had many representations from people in my community who are frustrated by the fact that its's taking, on average, 27 months to get access to an approval process for an 887 visa. It's absolutely unacceptable that this government should have relegated rural, regional and remote Australia to the bottom of the pile when we know that it's rural, regional and remote Australia that is, often, hardest hit when it comes to these sorts of services.

It hasn't just been in my home area of the Riverland. I've spoken, right the way across the country, to doctors, nurses and health institutions only to hear the same story over and over again. Rural, regional and remote Australia are ignored. They're treated as poor cousins. We need to make sure we have the appropriate incentives so that equity of health care is something that all Australians can rely on—instead of just talking about it.

That's why we're saying the government needs to come up with real solutions, real and tangible measures that will deal with workforce crises so that we can see the whole of our care sector adequately supported. Right now, all we're seeing is healthcare workers in rural, regional and remote Australia being sucked into the city because of the greater ability of those institutions to afford it. And measures that have been put in place by this government are encouraging those people that are currently in rural and regional Australia to move into these city areas.

It is not just rural, regional or remote when we talk about small towns and communities that are very far from capital cities. They are, of course, the hardest hit, but it even applies to places like Geelong. In the last few weeks, we saw an announcement by the Epworth Geelong private hospital that it is intending to close its maternity services in March. The reason they stated was 'workforce shortages'. We have a massive hospital—that was delivering 500 to 600 babies a year—making the decision that it can no longer safely deliver its services because it cannot get access to workforce.

It's a very sad reflection that, despite the Labor Party coming into government on the promise that it was going to support the workforce—they were going to deal with the issues that we all knew COVID had delivered to our healthcare sector; they were going to assist—we have seen nothing, when it comes to addressing the workforce challenges. We have a massive, glaring example of that in Victoria with the Epworth hospital's recent decision.

We need to also understand that there are other measures that can assist rural and regional Australia in dealing with the challenges before us. One of those is telehealth. We saw this government rip 70 telehealth services out of the Medicare support network, and we're fearful that there are moves afoot for more telehealth services to be removed from the Medicare rebate or MBS system.

We know that it's people who live in rural, regional and remote Australia who are more likely to be accessing telehealth. This is simply because they either can't get in to see a doctor, because of the massive workforce shortages, or they live so far away from where a doctor is that sometimes the only opportunity for them to get access to healthcare is over the phone.

We need to change the way we look at addressing some of these challenges and stop admiring the problems. Stop talking them down. Stop talking about the negatives of the situation. Eight and a half months into government, we'd like to see the government put some real measures on the table. Deliver on your urgent care clinics. Don't keep coming in here and talking about them, actually deliver them. We know that some three months out from the date this government promised we would have urgent care clinics up and running—by the middle of May—not one urgent care clinic is up and running. All we have is seven clinics with expressions of interest. We don't know where they're going to be.

Equally, we've seen measure after measure, promise after promise, not delivered. They went to the election and said they'd strengthen Medicare. Medicare has weakened. They went to the election promising to put care back to aged care. The aged-care sector is in crisis, at the moment, because of the undeliverable mandated requirements of those opposite. Of course we want to see our aged-care facilities provide the best possible care for our older Australians, but you can't mandate the impossible. That's exactly what you've done, and you will see rural, regional and remote nursing homes close because they just won't be able to meet these requirements. So what are you going to say to those older Australians who will have to move hundreds of miles away from their loved ones because you have mandated a requirement that is impossible to deliver?

As I said, the greatest challenges before us are workforce and putting the confidence of Australians back into general practice, neither of which have been done by this government. In fact, the exact opposite has occurred. There have been issues in addressing workforce, issues that have actually had a detrimental effect on the rural and regional Australian health workforce, through the changes to DPA and the refusal to accept 887 visas as being a priority class.

At the same time, we have a minister who constantly talks about all of the negatives in the health system, who is always saying that there's a crisis and that there's a problem—he's admiring the problem day in, day out—and who is doing nothing to support our GPs. We have not seen him say a word about the fact that the states and territories have been threatening to add a greater payroll burden on our general practice clinics right at a time when there is a crisis. We are seeing bulk billing rates falling like flies—a massive drop—and yet what this minister has done is actually nothing, apart from reducing the level of confidence that GPs have that this government is actually going to do anything about it.

We'd certainly say to the state and territory governments: have a serious think about the decisions that you may be making in relation to enforcing a payroll tax, an additional financial burden on general practice, right at a time when they need our help and they need our understanding to make sure that we are able to build confidence back up in our healthcare system and particularly in general practice.

We've heard so much about the negativity of general practice, but I want to give a shout-out to our general practitioners, who, on the whole, are the most amazing, hardworking frontline people. They are the people who are absolutely at the centre of our care in Australia. If we don't have a strong general practice sector in this country, our health sector is in big trouble. So we need to address the issues that are the most burning at the moment. We need to address the issues that are fundamental and the cause of the problems that are facing our healthcare sector, and they are workforce and confidence in general practice.

As we stand here today, we know that rural, regional and remote Australia is the place where these issues are felt the most. We know, from the motion moved by Senator Waters, that women who live in rural, regional and remote Australia often have some of the poorer health outcomes and some of the lowest quality care because of an inability to access maternity, paediatric and obstetric services. It is very sad that we should be here today debating this particular motion, but I commend Senator Waters for raising the issue of rural, regional and remote access to health care and certainly want to put on the record my— (Time expired)

Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to highlight the experiences of some of the expectant mothers in my community who've shared their stories:

I'm currently 23 weeks pregnant with my fourth child. All three of my kids were born in Gladstone, my last being only nine months old, born in April 2022.

The situation we currently face of not having a place to birth here in town worries me every day. I have 3 kids to think about as well as my health and my baby's health when it comes time to give birth.

I have quick labours of around 1-2 hours so a trip to Rockhampton isn't an option for me. Neither is staying there weeks before my due date, as I have no help to get my kids to school and watched while I may need to be gone. The cost of having to stay in some hotel and the stress of not being in your own home at 38 weeks pregnant is daunting. Birth is already such an uncertain and unplanned thing, so having this major uncertainty about where I can birth is keeping me up at night.

Another person said:

The bypass hasn't just been hard on expecting mothers, it has also been hard on partners as well, watching and listening to the extra stress and worry on our partners who are about to take on one of the hardest challenges the human body will go through. They shouldn't have to worry about whether they are going to make the 1hr-1.5hr drive to another town to give birth.

Gladstone is an industrious town where a lot of the population work long hours, some working more than twelve hours a day in hot and physical jobs. These people are then asked to drive their labouring partner over an hour on a road that is always littered with potholes and rough bitumen. This is unsafe and dangerous. Even with an ambulance transfer the partners still have to drive themselves or risk not being able to support their partner and missing this precious moment. Things need to change, things need to happen and it needs to be sooner rather than later.

Debate interrupted.