 Thank you very much, Lisa. Welcome. I think I'm going to let you introduce yourself if you'll feel much better for the different names. So thank you very much, Lisa. Thank you very much. Thank you everyone for coming. I can see there's a lot of it in and out of the room, the same people come in and going, so I don't know whether people are getting kicked off. But it is an awkward time in the afternoon to be sitting in with your family. So thank you. My name is Lisa Barrett and I'm a birth worker in South Australia. I have previously been a midwife and I want to talk to you today about the sociology of beliefs. So this is not a talk about women. So before I get on with it, I really want everyone to understand that the most devastating thing that can happen to a woman is that her baby dies. It affects her for her whole life. It affects her partner, the siblings, the grandparents, the friends, and the community at large. And we often, when we're talking around issues, forget that it really is a big deal to have your baby die. We often go to call it an adverse event. So if I call it an adverse event, it's not because I'm trying to diminish what happens. It's just the way we talk about it and I think often it makes us feel less involved in what's going on. I also want to acknowledge that Agnes was kept for over 700 days without a court appearance and she was shackled when she was at court and whatever it is that happens is a totally an abuse of human life. And say that Agnes is not the only person who is in jail for attending birth. All around the world there are people in jail or in court and we know nothing about them. So this is for them too. When I talk to women, especially around their home birthing, I tell them that it's not just about safety. This is the actual talk they get. It was told to me that I was forthright but there is no point pretending. If you are planning to birth at home, it's not just about safety. It's about responsibility. And if you are not happy to take on responsibility for yourself and your child, home birth is not for you. If your baby dies at the hospital, they will make a big deal of telling you that it's not your fault and an even bigger deal of telling you it's not their fault because crap happens and you get the support that they can offer you. If your baby dies at home, no matter what the reason, they will blame you. They will say you made bad choices and they will blame your care provider and say that they were negligent. That is a fact. And as a birthing woman, if you can't accept that you shouldn't be at home no matter what and I think it applies to midwives and birth advocates and birth workers too, you really have to know that that is the bottom line. And I also want to say that when it comes to the section rate, I don't really think that money is a driver to me because there's not enough of us to create a problem. I actually think that what I just said is the main driver. I feel that CTGs, aninduction and augmentation and instrumental birth are a symptom of the real problem which is very difficult to accept responsibility. But if you do any of all of those things, then they will say you did everything you could and nobody wants to be in a position where they can be accused of not doing everything. And I think until we all look at that absolute issue, then we can't ever change this to their intersection rate no matter what we say about all the interventions that happen. I want to tell you a bit about sociology and about belief. So when we're coming to the main part of the talk, you know exactly where I'm coming from. Sociology is a scientific study of human society. It's all in development, the institutions and how it supplies to social policy. Beliefs are really shared ideas that people have collectively and they're mainly gained from social experience which comes in lots of different forms and for efforts they need now as we all know on the internet. And our values are abstract to society that define the idea of principles of what is desirable and what is socially correct. And really that's how we form all the opinions that we have. There's a really good book that was written in 1928 and it's called Propaganda. It's by Edward Bernay. Sorry I'm reading this because I don't know that I remember who it was from. And he worked on the hypothesis that there are invisible people carrying the power that saves our thoughts. And he looked at psychological manipulation and the examination of techniques in public communication. It's a really, really good book to have a look at. Yes I'm really sorry I don't do slides. I expect you to all listen really closely and chat and tell me what you think. Why would you need slides when there's such a fabulous picture of me out there? I don't even look like that today, trust me. Okay so I thought that I would look at some fundamental beliefs that I had or I used to have and I think is true for most of us as midwives. And that really drives what we would believe to be true about everything. The old fact was Edward L. Bernay's and the book was written in 1928. You've probably got to go on to Amazon to find it. You know one of those old places. Okay so we have a few fundamental beliefs and I thought of myself and where I was quite a few years ago now and I trained as a midwife at the age of 21 and I totally believed in regulation. I thought being in a registered midwife was pretty amazing and I think regulation is one of midwifery's fundamental beliefs. If you were here at the very beginning you would have shared the lady from ICM talking about regulation and standard practice and we pushed for that because we believed it to be to the public safe because it protects midwives even fewer standards and it makes everyone competent. Well does it keep the public safe? I don't think so. Does it protect midwives? Definitely not because even if we're not on trial in a criminal court there are tribunals that are trials that are coroners courts that can be perceived as trials under a civil court so it really doesn't protect the midwife. Does it ensure a standard? That's always debatable because we all have different standards on fewer and does it make us all competent? No it definitely doesn't do that. Some people will get their qualification and never ever do anything else, never do any advanced learning, never go anywhere with it. Another one that I really thought and I find it's ingrained so deeply in people they don't even know they think it is that doctors know more about health than anybody else and they're probably the most knowledgeable people. Even in my own family, my older children once I tried to say, well I'm going to the doctor and when they've gone they've come back and said, what you said, that even it is generally, you're right, doctors don't know about health, they know about thickness, however the perceived, we're looking at the perceived thought which is the thought that it's hard to get out of and that's not going away from the fact that if we really need antibodies they save our lives. If we really, if we're in a car crash they can save our lives. We're looking at a general community thought. A dead baby means that someone's to blame. Now I can't say that I always thought that, but you know that is a time when you think it couldn't happen to me because I'm safe because I'm a hospital midwife because I've done everything right and that is definitely perpetuated in society, especially throughout the home birth and community. The next one is, if it's in the newspaper there must be at least a grain of truth to this and I am totally guilty of this until it happens to me and I can tell you now that I don't believe that anymore and any piece of news I look at I just think, oh yeah, but what's the real story? Yeah, you're right, these people are mostly lies, but mostly, you can even put mostly in there so even you would think there's a grain of truth in more things and the biggest one of all is the country we live in is free and most people, countries, we tend to believe that and I myself sort of believed it until I realized that anyone, they can take your DNA and you can't control that and they can get your bank account details and your email and take your things and you can't control that either and we think that only happens to criminals and we'd be glad if it happened to criminals but it's not how it works, it affects everybody every day. So when I was looking at those things and I think they are fundamental beliefs that give us what we believe, we come on to Agnes' case and how we believe it couldn't happen to us or it couldn't happen to in our country because we're free, because we have midwifery, people recognize us and there's no way that it's going to be the way it is over there. So what I wanted to do and we could go to the horse's mouth and email Agnes and say what's the real story here or we could sort of look at so many things but I thought I wanted to see what most of our perceptions would be by using tools that we use to get our perceptions and that's mainly the news and in this day and age, in today's world countries it's probably Google, so I did fully Google Agnes and I had to really commend Tony Harman for the fantastic job she did of getting her stuff out there and making it really ingrained into us throughout promoting her film and getting it out there that the newspapers picked up what seemed to be an AAP statement because I looked at many newspapers from the lefty guardian in the UK to the sunscreen tabloids and most of them said the same sort of thing and one, that Agnes was arrested in jail for championing home birth and two, that home birth is illegally hungry and that's a terrible thing and I think that most of us think that it's a terrible awful thing that she was arrested in jail for home birth and championing home birth and for maybe not American midwives but for most of the Commonwealth midwives when midwifery is a regulated profession we really think that that couldn't happen to us and home birth is illegal and hungry which is horrific and again for those of us who have literally regulated bodies we really, yeah, it is a mistake in your life so that we really believe that these things are not going to happen so what I try to do then is look behind that because I first came to know about Agnes the same way probably all of you did by seeing the literature put out there and saying there was this film coming and we wanted to show it so I did do a bit of googling myself before then and so you have to go back to your 40 pages to find out what was going on then and there's such a good job now on all the stuff that has come up since and when I watched the movie of the things that we think that can't happen here I spent quite a bit of time crying because when she was going through the reporters and through the court case I felt that that did happen to me it wasn't a criminal case although many people did ask me if I'd been convicted it was actually a coroner's case but they can run it however they want except they can't convict you at the end so I thought that it is so close to home that how could it be that she went to prison then and she was arrested for homeless being illegally hungry so I had a good look at all of the things over the last couple of days because I've only been googling this for a few days and the truth is homeless wasn't illegally hungry it was unregulated which is very different so unregulated homeless means that basically the government in January a lot of the time and what I read was about one in three births were followed up by the police and sometimes they were looking old unless they went to the hospital they were treated pretty shitty but they were going on with it and I don't know how that's any different this year even as a registered midwife in Australia that's pretty much how it was there were good relationships and there were crap relationships and then sometimes you treated brilliantly and the women are well respected and sometimes the women are treated digitally as well and yeah I think that in the name I'll believe that things are illegal is not always when it's unregulated and unregulated doesn't mean illegal we just think it does and that's what fuels then our beliefs that it couldn't happen to us because it's not illegal or it's regulated or whatever so on the note of it being unregulated I read some very interesting comments about what happened because Agnes was fighting for regulation she wanted regulation because they felt that that would make midwifery better and this is maybe how she put her head up she was actually stopped from practicing for six months back in 2003 after an event that happened in 2000 but obviously at that point nobody was paying any attention and I know lots of midwives who have been suspended from practice for different things for a short length of time, a long length of time they've been on restricted practice and no one ever really knows unless you put it out there no one knows and sorry, I... she was also an obstetrician but she was suspended from being an obstetrician and she went and retrained because obstetricians couldn't really go to the bus although some do go to bus she's not the only doctor that goes to home bus in Hungary and what happened with the push for regulation was it was finally regulated and those midwives that were doing it couldn't really do it anymore I read something that an apprentice midwife said well I had to stop because I was afraid of exactly what was happening to me to Agnes and the members of the practice happening to me and that I'd get thrown in jail so once regulation came in it was up to the government to regulate midwives and from what I Google there's only one regulated midwife and that was only last year so we're thinking so I was thinking that Italy could never happen to us we're already looking that the nuances of this is that actually it was going on before and in the minute that regulation came in and the more that regulation happens the harder they get on regulation actually the more difficult it is for women to actually get the birth that they want so we also know that saying that there's an illusion is sometimes political strategizing and I know for myself so with Agnes getting more and more out there pushing more for women to have a regulated midwife and I'm sure she wasn't pushing for regulation to stop midwifery she was thinking like all of us think regulation will make it better say for a more standard that she put her head quite far up over the precipice and I don't know about any of you but I was getting along quite nicely myself and before 2009 when what happened to me was I was on some committees I was on the home birth committee besides Australia where they were making policy I was on the policy committee for water birth I was on the South Australian New Zealand Outcome Stealing Committee and slowly I realized that actually there's nobody really on the side of women and there's hardly anybody on the side of midwives to the point that the health department said to me in one meeting when I complained excuse me it's okay for you to talk but you're here to support the women well I don't know what the other midwives or the politicians or the consumer were there to support but at that point I sort of realized that it wasn't really really something that I wanted to be involved in I was also Vice President of the College of Midwives in South Australia at the time and ended up having to resign because I had clients who didn't fit anybody's criteria even though there wasn't any at the time and I was apparently told I was giving them a bad name so rather than drop clients I actually had to resign from there then in 2009 things were changing and again this comes into what's happening what's happening with Agnes we were pushing for Medicare and we were pushing for practicing rights at the hospital and mainly the people who were pushing of it were homeless yes we are still on the Sociology of Belief and this is because I'm just trying to explain to you that we believe that it couldn't happen to us but actually it can happen to any of us I use myself because I know what's happening to myself but I believe if you look at Bethany Reid a similar thing is happening to her and I read on the Mandala Law that they were looking at that Agnes being imprisoned why did they do that? Because they can and what motivates them it's just the power and power corrupt actions and that really is the Sociology of what we choose not to believe which is why we think it couldn't happen to us we can talk about Agnes's case because she wasn't jailed for something in home birth and when I was talking about myself what I actually was going to say was until I stood up and started logging about what was happening under changes I don't think anybody really had noticed me it was only when we started logging documents and we started getting information to the public that before you know it the Parliament House was following me and the State Department of Health was following me quite openly on my RFS feed and before that I wasn't really noticed by anybody Agnes was arrested and she was charged with killing as a result of carelessness during work so what she really was charged with was over some death and we might think that wouldn't happen to us because we have a regulatory body but anyone who's been to a tribunal would know that a tribunal is called a trial and it might not mean that you go to prison but at any point the police can be investigating you anybody, any time, any midwife so what we want to believe in the Sociology of what we want to believe is because everybody needs a hero and quite rightly Agnes is a hero she is an absolute hero and she does every bit of accolade that she's ever had and she has been treated abominably and her human rights have been violated but look around in your own country why is it easy to support Agnes for the Australian College of Midwives and the International Confederation of Midwives and the UK College of Midwives why is it easy to support Agnes because we think that Hungary isn't a physical country that Hungary's laws are not our laws but it is not easy to turn around and support a similar thing in your own country because it is too controversial or it is too close to home or you don't want to be charged by the same breath when Agnes went to court her charges when she finally went she was held without beliefs and without going to court because they felt that she would just continue to do this and yes I believe a witch hunt is an abuse of human rights that doesn't mean that I don't think that things should be investigated or that we should never look at our practice or we should never look at improvements or we should change that means that what we believe will happen to us if we are safe or if we are good or if we follow the rules is not a real thing just by before we get to the court case again I was talking to an aviator because this applies to lots of different scenarios and it was a really well known aviator in South Australia and we were talking I was talking about this subject and he talked about crashes and he said in flying there are two people there are the people who have had a crash and there are the people who haven't and the people who haven't might think it's because they are the best or they are safe or they got great equipment or the best training but actually they're just in the queue to become the people who have and it's not until you have had one that it's not really because of any of those things and I think that actually applies to midwifery so when Agnes is in court the court case was similar to many court cases that go along some in a criminal court and for people in regulation if we're just looking at the tribunal which doesn't mean a custodial sentence what happens to Agnes is awful but it does mean that how they are taken how it is taken on is similar so when she was charged she wasn't allowed to have any expert witnesses from above because by this time everybody is involved and everybody wants to put in there was only written submissions for an expert witness and you might think that wouldn't happen because there are lots of expert witnesses especially in the UK and in Australia and what happens again in our case is that there was an expert midwifery witness and she was sidelined and in the write-up of the case she was barely mentioned all of the facts all of the recent stuff that she said about midwifery didn't make the final cut and there were so for Agnes's case the experts were objected experts in her country all of them totally against home birth and some of them not even with an appropriate of gynequalification and her case was done on protocols for a hospital well I can tell you that's exactly what happened we did have some obstetricians give written submissions but they were never cited their expert obstetrician was against home birth quite openly and they did also put an expert on the stand who wasn't an obstetrician nor gynecologist but was part of the ANA who have an open anti-hundreds policy so it is not so different what happened there as to what happened here in Australia or to what happens in the UK when you're looking at why governments do this and that comes back down to the propaganda of what we believe often for the governments who don't want to be seen who shackle a midwife and put it in prison for seven hundred days will do things that will make society in general believe something that they want and what I was saying about heroes is something that a journalist said to me and she said you are either a hero or a villain in a story because that's what people want and if you're not the hero then you must be the villain and you can't do anything about that so I know in the media in Hungary that Agnes was the villain she had started with some kind of media and at the end the media was horrific and what turned it around was the amazing Tully Har-Harman and her fantastic film about what are the real issues here but again it's really what makes us believe it and for me sometimes I think that some of that stuff makes us believe it couldn't happen to us because it doesn't actually go into detail on all the issues so governments who can't stop midwifery because that would look terrible on there and we're free put out there in the media what they want make regulations as what they want and dress it up so that it looks like they're full midwifery I heard a talk earlier about maybe Tamid Rose in Australia and there were lots of people and questions being asked but it really didn't get answered because what happens when you regulate more is that you get more rules and more rules to protect some people that it doesn't protect a woman who wants to be back after two sections at home and it won't protect her care provider I don't know if the media really oh I see the media does need more regulation no the media just need to understand what they do is to report the facts and that would be really the best thing for the media I think that we do all want a few reasons that it won't happen to us and that's why we believe that regulation is a good thing but regulation doesn't protect that in fact sometimes it makes it happen also and again you can go and look at Becky Rouge case in the UK which is the highest profile case in the UK and I could find at the moment so what the government in Hungary did was they prosecuted Agnes over cases to make home birth look devastatingly dangerous I saw another little quote that said a few babies died and they used that to create the issues and that's what they did and I said a couple of cases where the baby died and I saw a really good quote because I thought I'd add because it was from Sarah Stewart and it says clearly this is being used to score particular political points in Hungary and of course she's right because of course it was to score political points in Hungary and the midwife that I told you that said she was afraid that something like this would happen to her so it made her stop so prior to regulation prior to regulation sorry that's my phone so prior to prior to regulation the midwives could do it and then we'll look at but after regulation the government had to make it so that everybody was scared to do it and make the rule so tight that nobody could get the ability to do it and that's exactly what is happening in Australia and it's really what's happening in the UK and that's right in Canada we all think that oh we have midwives here so it's fine but we only have midwives here to do the things that either the government bodies or the regulatory bodies say that you can do it so when we're looking at what we believe about Agnes it's that we believe that she was just championing her birth and in our country nothing like that would happen so what the truth is about Agnes is that she was birthed and with lots of women she put her head up there and she was broken and when a baby dies you either look at it as an adverse event or you put it in the media and you make sure that nobody else wants ever to do it if they put media out there about the hospital birth then actually there will be no room in the press for anything else so I think that they have to push what their agenda is and do you know what Emma? It can happen to a hospital midwife inside Australia there was a case where a couple sued the hospital and the hospital counter sued the midwives so yes none of us are protected and midwives are the bottom of the heap and if they're looking for someone to blame it's always going to be a midwife I wanted to tell you something else about Agnes' court case about what they said were her problems so after they made the charges the main things were that in a shoulder discloser there was a shoulder discloser case where the baby died that they couldn't expect the baby over four kilos to give birth and she should have known that and in fact that's pretty much exactly the main reason that they said that is a maneuver that we did was impossible for midwives to do and that when I needed help to get the baby out it was simply because I was incompetent so when we look at the net symbols of what actually happened to Agnes it does happen here it happens all over the world it happens on a daily basis I must say that some of my own issues started when I was looking at Agnes' case started because I was more than a little pissed off that the Australian college of midwives and the Australian private midwives both of which I belonged to when I was a midwife supported Agnes so much and they got it out there and they showed the movie but they couldn't support somebody in their own country and I had already been told by the private midwives association I said be a secret member because I was controversial and that was back when I was a midwife and I also know that the British College of Midwives sent Lezy Page went personally to do the test and she put in a piece for Kermansy and she is someone who has given evidence against midwives in a very similar situation in fact there is a social case in Canada so why are we not looking at a thing where every body of midwives can support midwives all the way down the line I don't know why there is I don't know what makes the difference but I do know that when they had the right to try the international conference that there was lots of talk about what was going on and in Australia they thought they'd have a conference too and I thought well great that's a really great thing to do and a great way to get everything out there but I was told I couldn't sit on the floor because I was too controversial and so I bought a ticket and just went along and I was not allowed to speak I was not allowed to say anything however a professor did get up and used the coroner's note to create a massive talk against me I was in the audience I wasn't allowed to say anything I wasn't allowed to get up I wasn't allowed to ask a question so where is it that we think that human rights start and end and who is it who is able to be the people that we support and the people that we don't really support I think that's a massive midwifery issue that Hannah Darling was talking about that no I wasn't allowed to ask a question when she was saying that we should all stick together she showed a great picture of a pile of different types of space all tied together and that's what it's like we are all different we don't all agree with what each other say however if we all stick together then we are a formidable body I remember when I was nominated for the Private Midwives Association for every role and I wasn't allowed to take any of them but all of that is personal to me and I understand that but I'm not the only one I'm not the only person in Australia that has gone through Hellenberg for supporting women and I'm not the only person who has put her head up and spoken out and has been vilified for that and I'm not the only person who has been at a birth where they have passed away and it's just if we all support each other no matter what our type is no matter where we are because we're supporting women then actually we will all get together and we will be successful and I think that's where we come back around to the sociology of our beliefs if we believe that it could happen to us and we believe that we are all in it together then actually we can affect social change in the way that the books tell us that it's an invisible people carrying the power that shapes what happens but until we believe that it couldn't happen to us because we live in a food country it couldn't happen to us because we're safe because we're regulated because we're good practitioners then I don't think we're actually going to get anywhere in maternity services and things are never actually going to get better okay so I stopped the breath now yep, taking a breath that's marvelous, 40 minutes please so we're out of breath at all so I don't think we're going to be coming up to the end of this session because anyone got any questions in particular questions that you'd like to ask Lisa does a brilliant job of answering questions if you go along, does anyone there in the last few minutes want to ask anything specific if you put your hand up I will enable your mic for you I'll go ahead sorry pardon Denise, if you want to ask a question yes I use Lisa and maybe Licky Thompson going to write your stories please well, I won't be writing a story anytime soon because I'm still being investigated by the police but you never know the only question here is how do we cross the lines and it gets more and more difficult to cross the lines the more we agree with regulation the more we bow to it and the more we don't stick together then we can't until we all agree to disagree but work in one community then it's almost impossible really um I don't know that we can because there's the people who are in and the people who are not in what of differences is women it becomes very difficult to um put aside our own fears and going back to that it could never happen to us and the way we do responsibility it's almost it's almost an impossibility really because midwifery is quite broken as well as obstetrics is quite broken I think that uh Lisa you've got a couple of hands up a couple of people would like to ask questions do you like to take a question do you like to have their hand up or block them now do you like to have their hand up can you put it up a bit you've probably taken it back down again at least I've lost whoever it was so go ahead okay um yes I can talk about the times when you were raided by the police and I have also been detained and read my rights by the police um what happened here in Australia with a home birth um whether the baby is compromised or not alive is that the police are called and you are detained by the police and they search your home and they take your equipment and they take your telephone took a little noodle that I had and asked me if I broke water with it so um that is basically what happens here every time and this is not just for the midwife this is for the woman as well it happens to the woman, they go to the woman's house even if the baby has just passed away they take her equipment, they take her photos they take her telephone um in a serious way. Yeah. There was a question earlier that I was going to answer, but I can't really remember what it is now, because so many people are tapping. I'm sorry about that. This has been a thing in the media. It's always a double-edged sword. A positive view of midwifery is a good thing to let people know what midwives do and how they act. However, midwives are constrained in what they do and how they act. So you can say once one midwifery is really important and we will be with you no matter what, however, this is not actually true. And they only care about negative outcomes because that is actually printable news and it is actually what the government would want you to know about because they want you to think that home birth is so dangerous and certain care providers or all care providers or midwives are really dangerous and that you do it at your own risk. And that's why they drag women through the news as well as care providers. Tell them about my DNA. I had to give up my DNA. I didn't want to, but they review your rights and if you don't voluntarily do it, they do it with reasonable force. And that can apply to anybody. They can't stop until they do, but they can stop you on the premise of a random breath test and then trying to achieve and that has also happened to me on US cases. But this is all happening in Australia today. I think that it is different in different cases. I think it is particularly bad here and it is particularly bad around me at the moment. I agree Rachel that it does depend, but the police still get to investigate all of it whether they are overt or covert. I don't think it does, being a private midwife in Australia, although I think being a private midwife and being an independent midwife is different. If you're a midwife with maybe care, you are not going to be home birthing with anybody unless you're going to sort of put that aside. It's really quite a complex system that we have here now. Lisa, I think you've taken a breath and I'm going to jump in there. We can sit around and talk about these issues for the rest of the conference, I know. But I'm going to have to draw close to this session and thank you very, very much for being very honest with us and sharing with us what your experience is. Lisa, I'm going to thank you for that. Is there anything you just sort of do that with? I don't know about anyone else, but I'm feeling a bit surprised and a bit scared. Can you sort of come up to me in a sentence to make me feel a little happier about being a midwife? Well, I don't think you need to tell people because once you've been to and understood that there is nothing as amazing in the whole world and we fight every day so that every woman gets the right to have that exact birth. And that's where there's so many people fighting for the cause because it's something that we all believe in. And that is a really good thing. Lisa, thank you very much on those inspiring words. I think what I just said to be inspired was that it could be challenged and maybe the things that you said. So thank you for that, Lisa. I'm sure you've done that for all of us. Really appreciate you stepping in, particularly at the last minute for us. So I'm just going to turn the recording off now.