Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. While the member for Wakefield and I can occasionally be on opposite sides of the policy debate, I thank him for raising this matter in the context of National Palliative Care Week, which runs from 24 to 30 May.

National Palliative Care Week is a regular reminder about the transient nature of life itself. It is a chance to reflect deeply on what is most important in life, human relationships with family and friends at its very core. It is an opportunity to appreciate the reality that human existence traverses a natural and consistent arc, marked by the enduring milestones of birth, life and death. It also reminds us that, in 2015, death need not be feared; and that all of us can help, and be helped by others, in the process of achieving as good and compassionate a death as possible.

In Tasmania one of the ways we are able to support this aspiration is through the Hospice at Home Program, delivered by The District Nurses, which the member for Wakefield mentioned, which successfully delivered 583 home palliative care packages last year. The growing need for home-based palliative care had been evident for a number of years and I am pleased to say that Tasmanian families now have access to professional support services at a difficult time for loved ones who want to die at home. Many of our people have successfully achieved their goal to remain at home at the end of their lives, which may not have been possible without this program. Many others are now able to achieve their wish of staying at home for as long as possible.

Support workers under the Hospice at Home program provide a range of care services and on-call help. The Hospice at Home program also provides equipment to help patients get home earlier after a hospital stay. More than 80 per cent of our Hospice at Home patients are under specialist palliative care services, and the program has brought together existing providers and access to extra help when clients need it.

Mine is one of those Tasmanian families that have had loved ones pass away in recent years, and each of their experiences has been different. Each individual had different perspectives on how their end-of-life journey would play out. Often, they transitioned responsibility for some, or even all, day-to-day matters to others, and were open to discussing with them in advance the nature and formal authority for their end-of-life care. These are big questions.

Again, my family has recently concluded one such discussion with a very close family member who is dying and who has embraced an open discussion with those who love her most. The sorts of things to explore are along the lines of what the member for Wakefield mentioned. Who is best placed to support you at the end of your life? How do you want to be remembered by those closest to you, and how might that remembrance be marked? What legal options do you have to support you to ensure that your intentions and wishes are actually fulfilled?

The medical questions are perhaps the most difficult but also of great significance. What type of medical assistance does someone want now, and do their wishes change if there is a sudden and irrecoverable deterioration in their health? Are they open to an advanced care plan enabling them to specifically detail the treatment they want if they become too ill to reflect their wishes? It is important to note that advanced care planning is not euthanasia but about people taking control and not leaving their future care to others and to chance.

Perhaps the most important thing about having these discussions in the first place is that such openness brings rewards: it supports a dying individual's peace of mind, it clarifies their actual as opposed to assumed intentions with their loved ones, it acts to diminish the burden on every individual as their faculties inevitably diminish and it helps to reduce the stress on other parties as a loved one approaches their end of life. Once commenced, the exact nature of the discussion is, again, unique for everyone, but such a discussion must be approached with the necessary balance of openness and sensitivity.

For all of these reasons, this is an important matter before the House today, and I therefore strongly lend my support to the motion of the member for Wakefield and encourage all Australians to keep the discussion going. That involvement will range from quiet reflection to active discussion to actually distilling and drafting our personal final intentions. In the end, these matters are far too important to be left to chance. I commend this motion to the House.

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