Professor Jane Sandall CBE

Vice Chancellor, the Chancellor, the council, staff, distinguished guests, graduates and their families and friends. Before I begin, I would like to acknowledge, the traditional learning is a land where we meet today and paint my respects to the elders past and present. I'm honoured to be here today, onto such an important day for you and your families. They've supported you through university and I congratulate you on your achievement.

Education transforms lives. For example, we know educating girls is one of the best ways to reduce maternal mortality across the world. Maternal and infant health is talked about as a gender issue and I celebrate that. It's a hot political topic globally, because how we treat women and girls is a reflection about wider society. I'm a midwife. For me, midwifery is still the best job in the world. The privilege of being with women and their families on a journey to parenthood, and the magic of being there when a baby is born will never ever go away. When we have a child, we create parents, we create grandparents and aunts and uncles. We know from our research as a researchers here at UTS, that what happens to us in pregnancy and how we birth has a profound impact on the health of mothers and babies and their families. And we also know that birth can be a time of healing and a catalyst to reconnect with our families and communities.

Many people will say, why do you need to do research? I'm having a baby, because women have been saying this for millennia. In response, I would ask why pregnancy and birth is handled so differently across the world. For universal human condition, we have so many different ways and different countries. We need to look at the unintended consequences of what we do when we interfere with this finely tuned process. We need to provide birth services that enhance the experience as a safety of birth. Globally, maternity and reproductive health care has a track record of doing harm with the best intentions. When I graduated as a midwife, a long time ago in the mid-eighties, there was no internet. If we wished to question the evidence of what was done, for some of the practices we saw, the only way we could do was to go to a medical library and we needed a doctor's letter to get access to that library.

The internet has changed, absolutely transformed, how we access knowledge and how the public access knowledge. A paper published in the USA or UK will be hitting the Sydney Morning Herald the same day. It is so different. It was women who started this debate by questioning practice, and for me the lesson was clear, we should always listen to women and their families. We should have good reasons when we interfere with an actual process, and we should look for the consequences when we do. For me, a university education transformed my life and I was the first in my family to go to university, as I suspect there’ll be people in this room. I did my undergraduate degree in social sciences, part-time while working, and I had the support of my family for child-care and work to pay for leave, for which I am deeply, deeply grateful.

Many of you have had the same challenges and today is a time to thank all these people around you. You were fortunate to have a university education, and being taught how to think. So never stop asking questions, and being curious throughout your life. So thank you for the opportunity for speaking to you today and congratulations on your achievement and congratulations to all your families and friends.