Stewart Barbara: General Debate 
Stewart Barbara: General Debate 
[Volume:644;Page:13528] 
BARBARA STEWART (NZ First) 
: 
 Our maternity service statistics are quite shameful and the grandiose headline that we read in today’s newspaper “Heads may roll” and a baby’s death that could mean the axing of a health board are not going to fix the situation in either the long term or the short term. The bottom line is that this situation should never have got to this stage in the first place. Making an example of one district health board is going to do nothing to solve the operational problems and the staff shortages caused by successive Governments right throughout the country. 
We like to consider ourselves as a First World country but there is too high an incidence of death and injuries in relation to newborn babies for anyone to be even vaguely satisfied that we have the best possible maternity service operating here in New Zealand. We have the Health and Disability Commissioner conducting continual ongoing investigations into the injuries and deaths of mothers and the deaths of babies. The issue seems to be never-ending and we can feel very very sorry for all the families who have suffered these tragedies. 
What is going wrong? Many many things! We know that having a baby is not the same for everybody; it does vary from person to person—different to the textbooks—but the last thing that most mothers want is to be kicked out of the hospital as quickly as possible with the promise of a grocery voucher. What an insult! Mothers need some experienced care and they want some support to ensure that they are on the right line. It is absolutely essential. To think that someone would leave hospital for a $100 grocery voucher is absolutely chronic. It is wrong just so wrong. At this stage after having a baby most mothers find it even challenging to think logically let alone to think through the consequences of leaving an environment where medical assistance is available and where if it is required it is very very close. If beds are in such direly short supply then other measures must be taken. To wave a grocery voucher around in front of mothers is not an option. 
I think we have to realise that many of today’s mothers are older than mothers used to be and probably far less fit than mothers used to be because they have worked for longer and they have sat behind desks for many weeks—many years in fact. When the mothers of present-day mothers went in to have babies 2 weeks in hospital was the norm not 6 hours. Basically what it means is that mothers nowadays need greater care and their needs are often far more complex. And of course they need time to establish their bond with their babies. Babies are far more complex and challenging to deal with than filling out a piece of paper or playing on a computer. Motherhood is not an easy job. Mothers require far more guidance and expertise than quite often they receive. 
So what do we have now? We have the Minister of Health with an outstanding opportunity to act decisively in order to solve the problems within our maternity service. And the problems are not just in Wellington; there are problems New Zealand – wide and we have all heard of many examples. Perhaps Wellington does need to be first but every other district health board in the country needs to focus on this. So rather than the usual line of blaming the district health boards and then offering some soothing words about another report that “should throw light on the problem” or of setting up another committee the Minister has to look for solutions to a problem that is not going to go away because the statistics all show that the birth rate is rising. 
It is a big problem. We know that we are currently short of 200 midwives and the likelihood that we can actually fill that number of vacancies is extremely remote. That has to be of great concern to everybody. We know that it takes time to train midwives and that there is not a queue of people out there lining up to become midwives. The Minister has to look for alternatives and rapidly.