As the time for submissions has now passed there are yet more requests for letters to Nicola Roxon. This time it’s about the Medical Services Advisory Group. This is the committee set up to discuss Medicare access for midwives and their expanded role. It’s not for discussing homebirth but just the other stuff (which by the way is pointless if there is no homebirth).
There isn’t one practicing midwife on this committee let alone an independently practicing one. There are a number of great consumer reps and 2 midwifery academics. WTF are all these Obs doing on a committee focused on Midwifery? Why are they making the rules? One or two you could understand for fairness but this is totally outrageous.
Here are Nicola Roxon an her advisors email adddresses.
Email your outrage at this fix up of affairs. How can any voter in their right mind believe that the government are there to serve the best interest of the public, when this committee has vital disussions, it’s hush hush and midwife free!
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Too right Lisa! This is nonsensical bureaucracy.
Surely it’s not just the homebirth midwives who are glaringly missed from this group, but all midwives. An advisory committee that is set up to reform the way midwives work should have at least half its members midwives. By comparison this group has more than half of its members men, and many of those have a potential conflict of interest as they will be representing doctors who compete with midwives as primary maternity care providers.
Is this the battleground, at which the boundaries of 'women's business', or what is allowed in the quintessential female acts of bearing and nurturing a child, are decided?
Here's a copy of the email I sent to the people listed:
To whom it may concern,
I am writing to express my concern over the composition of the "Maternity Services Advisory Committee" which will be discussing the expansion of the role of midwives in Australian maternity services and Medicare funding. I am concerned that there are no practicing midwives, let alone independent midwives on this committee. Considering this committee has been formed to advise the future of midwives, I feel the Obstetric/Medical presence on this board is extremely overrepresented and the midwifery presence, especially those whom it directly effects, extremely underrepresented.
As a voter and maternity services consumer, I call for the composition of this committee to be altered to better represent those stakeholders that it impacts the most. These alterations must be undertaken immediately, before the committee sits. The federal government has stated that it will reform Australian maternity services to be a world class, midwife-led system, but this appears to be rhetoric in light of the medical/obstetric influence that the government is bowing to. Our maternity services will never be truly "Midwife-led" if the government takes the concerns of the medical stakeholders over the midwifery stakeholders. The composition of this committee is just one symptom of this, and it needs to be changed for voters to have any continued faith in the Federal Minister for Health.
Yours sincerely,
Mrs Amy M