KEY POINTS:
Playing peek-a-boo with toddlers was always going to be riskier for National leader John Key than the traditional political schmooze of kissing babies.
But 10 toddlers it was - and 20 invited adults - for the release of National's maternity-care policy yesterday at the Packing Shed Cafe and Gallery in West Auckland.
"Do you know an interesting and fascinating fact?" asked Mr Key, crouched at a little table and trying to engage Max Duder, 2 1/2, of Te Atatu South, the son of National supporter Jennifer Duder.
But Max had other things on his mind. "This is Mickey Mouse," he told the politician, waving around a small plastic toy.
And the interesting and fascinating fact? Mr Key's son is called Max.
The National leader went on to explain to the adults the maternity policy, which includes addressing the shortage of midwives through writing off their student loans in return for working in hard-to-staff areas.
"Maternity care is in crisis," he said. "In many parts of the country there is a chronic shortage of midwives, pregnant women cannot choose a lead maternity carer and there is no choice in birthing facilities."
National would provide more help for at-risk mothers, more postnatal health-worker visits, fund Plunketline, work with district health boards to provide greater choice in birthing facilities closer to where people lived, and would offer the choice of a longer post-natal stay in a birthing facility.
A government survey last year found that just over half of women who gave birth in a birthing facility went home within 48 hours. Thirteen per cent of the respondents felt they went home too early and some said they had been pressured to do so.
National would also try to entice more GPs into antenatal and postnatal care.
The General Practice Leaders Forum said yesterday that many GPs wanted to become involved in this way, and that getting GPs and midwives working together would help relieve the pressure on the midwifery workforce.
But National is offering no structural change of the kind sought by the forum to bring maternity funding under the primary health organisation system to develop the kind of multi-disciplinary system Labour has aimed for but not delivered.
When asked what National would do to bring PHOs and primary maternity care closer together, Mr Key said: "You've just got to keep working on involving the clinicians ... a good, functioning health system is one that will have that integration more neatly woven in together."
