Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that National Palliative Care Week (NPCW) runs from 24 to 30 May 2015; and

(2) encourages all Australians to use NPCW as a conversation starter, to get together with those close to them, celebrate life and talk about death, in particular the end of life decisions such as:

(a) how they want to be cared for;

(b) what values are important to them;

(c) what types of medical assistance they want to receive;

(d) whether they wish to be buried or cremated;

(e) where they want to pass away;

(f) whether they have appointed a power of attorney; and

(g) writing an advanced care plan.

National Palliative Care Week runs from Sunday 24 May to Saturday 30 May this year, and this year's theme is: 'Dying to talk: talking about dying won't kill you.' It seems to me that, in general—and it is a modern taboo rather than an old taboo—people are very reluctant to talk about their own mortality and their own deaths, and I think that most of us do not make the right arrangements for what is an inevitable part of life.

Over the last year I have spoken to a large number of organisations and individuals about palliative care—to many older Australians around the country and many other people on what is a bipartisan sort of issue. I have been to the Saint Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne and the one in Lismore. I have talked to Bill Silvester from Austin Health. I have talked to many families who are part of the Hospice@Home program that is being rolled out by the Hobart District Nursing Service in Tasmania. And, from all of those discussions and from the community forums I have held, I have found that people are actually quite interested in talking about not just the arrangements you might make when you are close to death but what your family and friends and you might do some time before that.

It seems to me that we do have to be better able to talk about it and better able to prepare for it as individuals, families and communities, because it is not something that you want to leave to chance. You do not want to leave your own wishes to chance. You certainly do not want to leave them in a will somewhere up in the attic. There is no point in your advanced care directive or your medical power of attorney being hidden away. You need them to be available at the time you need them, and you need your wishes to be observed.

When Labor was in government, one of the things we did do in Tasmania was to provide $60 million and a Better Access to Palliative Care trial, and Minister Plibersek at the time, now our deputy leader, put in place that very good program which I think gives us an indication of the way to go in the longer term as to how to fund palliative care. There was also funding for palliative care services as part of the National Partnership Agreement on Hospital and Health Workforce Reform.

Much of that work, I have to say, needs to be continued with and progressed, because there is a danger that it might fall apart under the current changes to health, and the cuts in particular. As state governments get more and more desperate about their budgets there is the tendency to pare everything back to hospital treatment. But, of course, the more we do in preventative health and the more we do outside of the hospital in terms of preparing palliative care services, both hospice and at-home services, the better the outcomes we get. As the Grattan Institute's very good report shows, having people die in institutions is a very costly affair. It is an intervention in people's lives that is often unnecessary, often in direct contradiction to their own desires. Most people, I think, would express the desire to die in their bed at home surrounded by friends and families. That is the common desire. Occasionally, people do have to be hospitalised or put in hospices. We do have to have those services available, too. But we want to do everything we can to give people the resources to plan effectively to die well.

I think this is an area that should be part of a bipartisan focus. I do not think it should be contested. The one thing that ruins partisanship is that we all have to cross this mortal divide—every single one of us. No matter how you vote, what your income is or what your station in life is, death is the great leveller, as Homer said in The Odyssey.

So, in National Palliative Care Week, we urge people to think about the end of their lives: how they want to be cared for, what values are important to you, what type of medical assistance you want to receive, whether you want to be buried or cremated, where you want to pass away—whether or not it is in a hospital—and, most importantly, have you done an advance care directive, a medical power of attorney and do your family know where those are? Make sure they are available. (Time expired)

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