Page 1208 - Week 05 - Thursday, 4 June 2020
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inquiry into maternity services in the ACT. I would normally take this time to call on some of those recommendations, but I think I will leave that up to other committee members to draw on.
Many participants to this inquiry shared deeply personal experiences in contemplating and preparing their contributions. The committee thanks these women, husbands and partners for their valuable and personal contributions. As chair, I would also like to thank my committee members—Mrs Dunne and Ms Le Couteur—for their time, their contributions and the collaborative way the committee has worked through some wide-ranging and challenging issues. Through these collaborative efforts we have been able to deliver a unanimous report. I would also like to thank former members of the committee who were part of this inquiry at its commencement: Mr Pettersson and Mrs Kikkert.
The committee also notes that the right to have access to quality, respectful, safe and equitable maternity services is not limited to Australia. The committee wishes to pay tribute to a prominent Australian who, sadly, passed away on 18 March 2020, Dr Catherine Hamlin AC, who made a lifetime commitment to improving women’s access to quality, respectful, safe and equitable maternity services. Vale, Dr Catherine Hamlin AC, 24 January 1924 to 18 March 2020.
I would also like to pay particular thanks to our committee secretary, Dr Andréa Cullen. Andréa works tirelessly in the committee office and in enabling the committee to meet its time lines. She also had an extra special role during this inquiry by helping to support those women who may not have felt comfortable providing their evidence to the committee, who were struggling emotionally with sharing their stories of childbirth. So I deeply thank Dr Cullen for her assistance and for her ongoing support to the committee. Without her assistance it would certainly be a lot more difficult for the committee to do its job as well. I respect her continued assistance. I believe that other committee members would agree with me in saying those words to Dr Cullen, so I feel I can fully speak on behalf of the committee by saying that.
I commend the report to the Assembly and I look forward to hearing my colleagues speak.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (10.57): I want to thank even more the contributors to this report. It could not have happened without them—my fellow committee members past and, in particular, present and of course our wonderful committee secretary, Dr Andréa Cullen.
As you would expect of an inquiry of this nature, the submissions tended to be deeply personal and some of them were deeply painful. I thank everybody for their contribution. I note that, by the nature of what we were doing, we heard largely from people who felt they had a problem with the maternity system. I have to try to remember that there are actually thousands of babies born in Canberra and that the experiences for most mothers and babies will have been better than those of some of the people who talked to us.
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