Homebirth Consortium Australia [HCA] is a newly formed working group made up of representatives from local homebirth groups around Australia. HCA's aim is to show their support for homebirth midwives and fight for changes to government policies so that midwives can return to working more autonomously and within their full scope of practice. By supporting our homebirth midwives, we support home birthing families and accordingly aim to protect homebirth within Australia.

We are calling on the government to make the following changes:

• Come up with a solution to the Professional Indemnity Insurance (PII) issue – the exemption for PII for birth, which has been extended 3 times since September 2009, expires on December 31st 2019 and will see homebirth midwifery made illegal after that date. We ask that the government subsidise PII for Privately Practising Midwives (PPMs), just as they do for Obstetricians.
• Remove the requirement for 2 midwives to attend births at home. This regulation was was brought in by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) without appropriate transparency and consultation with consumers or stakeholders, and has led to the demise of midwife assisted homebirth in Australia, particularly in rural and regional areas.
• Remove the requirement for midwives to collaborate with an Obstetrician or Doctor in order for women to access Medicare rebates - a one way power imbalance which is never required in the reverse.
• Remove the recent new requirement of all PPMs to undertake a time consuming, unnecessary and unfair audit - no other group of health professionals in any area have been subjected to this.
• Undertake a full inquiry into the increased vexatious reporting of PPMs to AHPRA - almost half of PPMs in Australia have been reported for minor complaints and the vast majority of these complaints were submitted by hospital staff. Consumer satisfaction reports concerning PPMs are consistently, overwhelmingly positive.

May 5th will see women around Australia participate in the nationwide ‘Mothers For Midwives March’ to AHPRA offices in every capital city. The march, accompanied by this petition, will show that we will not be ignored.