Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you're young at heart, the last thing you want to think about is how you're going to die. None of us will really know, as it's going to be different for every person. When it's my time, I'd like to know that my family will be fully supported after I'm gone. Yet, with the advances in modern medicine, we are living longer and dying at a much older age than we used to.

The result is a growing demand for end-of-life care—essential care for when all else has failed, including the very best of modern medicine. So who is there to look after our end-of-life care when we have a terminal diagnosis, when a person is in terrible pain and a family is struggling to cope? The real shining stars in this are our palliative care people. They are the people with big hearts who care for us and our families when there is no hope. They also care for families after someone has passed, to help them grieve and to help them take the next steps in their life. Yet palliative care services are under extreme pressure. They are struggling to cope. This time it's our turn to help them, and they need our help.

To keep up with the demands on palliative care, Tasmania must have secure and consistent funding that goes beyond the budget cycle. Yet the demand for palliative care is growing at an alarming rate. Why is that? What are the reasons? We Tasmanians are older than the rest of Australia, and we're getting older quicker. Palliative Care Tasmania asked Bernard Salt to work out what's going on and how it's going to change. He found the annual rate of growth in Tasmania's 85-plus age group will increase by 500 per cent over the next five years. People are living longer, and many will face growing health problems that will need compassionate end-of-life care. We can predict that as more of us live longer the demands on our health and care services will grow at the same unstoppable rate.

It's not just older people that need palliative care; end of-life care is needed for all ages in our community, from young to old. Diseases like cancer aren't picky when it comes to age. Palliative care can only work with proper funding. It needs cold, hard cash to meet the increasing demand for its essential services. It's not just about managing pain; it's about emotional, psychological and social support for patients and their families. I know we have a new Commonwealth funded hospice and respite care facility being built in Launceston; that's amazing. It's only 10 beds, but it is 10 beds more than we had and it all helps. Families get the care and support they need, and my community is deeply thankful. It ensures that some of those with terminal illnesses can live their remaining days with dignity, comfort and as much independence as possible.

Tasmania is just like most of our regional areas, where being able to use vital services depends on where you live and if you can get to where they are. The pressure on Tasmania's healthcare system is growing. It deserves real support, not hollow promises. We now have voluntary-assisted-dying laws in every state and the ACT, a change that has made us all think about end-of-life care. The debate about the laws highlighted the importance of proper palliative care. It also brought the hidden side of health care into the spotlight for every state and territory. However a person suffering with a terminal illness dies, they almost always need palliative care to have a good death. With proper funding, we can find out what works best and scale it up across Australia. By 'proper funding', I mean, secure and consistent funding that can give certainty to Palliative Care Tasmania—and I know they are having good chats with the state government at the moment. Then we can all have world-leading palliative care.

Regional Australia needs palliative care services. Its communities need mobile care, outreach services and telehealth support. People who work in palliative care are in short supply. They are specialists in a unique part of health care, and we need more of them. Seventy per cent of people want to die at home, surrounded by the people they love; less than 15 per cent get to do so. We need more home based care options that can ease the pressure on hospitals and hospice care.

Then there are the families who are left behind. Palliative care services address grief and provide wellbeing and bereavement support for families. Tasmania can fine-tune what works in delivering palliative care, with care that meets the needs of our regional communities. Palliative Care Tasmania has these plans in place and ready to go. It needs to know it has the funding to make it happen, and we owe them that.