Homebirths with limited hospital back up remain one of the most divisive topics in healthcare.

It is an issue in the media again because the Federal Government is looking to end what to many seems a bizarre loophole in the legal demand that every AHPRA registered health practitioner needs indemnity cover before they lay a hand on a patient.

For the last 15 years midwives opting to attend homebirths outside the support network of the public hospital system, have not needed insurance, no matter what the clinical risks involved in the birth.

It is a result of a Commonwealth exemption introduced in 2010 after Guild Insurance, the only insurer willing to provide cover at the time, pulled out, citing the claims risk as being too great given the limited pool of midwives it was covering and the catastrophic financial consequences if things went badly wrong and a successful claim was lodged.