Page 832 - Week 03 - Thursday, 14 April 1994
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One of the things the committee also came to grips with, and it did take some time, was balancing the rights of the health system - the medical practitioners and the nurses - against the rights of the patient and the patient's family. That is a very difficult issue when you are talking about euthanasia, whether it be passive or active, and I think the Bill as it has been presented goes a quite long way to doing that by giving a patient the right to adequate pain relief. That could be and probably will be argued in legalistic terms, but what it says is that you as a patient who is dying do have some rights; that you do have the right to pain relief to the level you believe is appropriate. We took advice from many doctors in this area, all of whom said, "Nobody knows how much pain a particular patient has, except the patient". I think that is a very valuable addition to this legislation and I am sure that it will go a long way to balancing those rights.
Mr Moore made a comment about palliative care, and that was raised time and time again in our public hearings. I am sure that we all agree that the Assembly should be concentrating its efforts more closely on improving palliative care in the ACT. We should be ensuring that our doctors and specialists have state-of-the-art training in palliative care and are highly skilled in using the latest pain management techniques available. It was said to us constantly that that simply is not the case at the moment, and I am sure that Mr Connolly will be coming to grips with that in his new portfolio responsibilities. In Canberra at the moment we do not have very much expertise in the area of pain management. It is an area of health that is changing very rapidly. Mr Moore's comment that total pain relief is impossible to some extent is true, but with state-of-the-art training in the area of pain management and palliative care you can go an awfully long way to achieving that - substantially further than we are currently achieving in Canberra. A number of the people involved in oncology and palliative care made the comment to us that a lot of the problems we are currently seeing can be put down to the fact that we simply do not have the expertise in Canberra at the moment. The other issue that was put to us is that we also do not have the facilities in Canberra at the moment.
I think the committee determined in the end that to go down the track of a Bill for active euthanasia before we had addressed the issue of services and expertise to do the absolute best we can under current legislation or under the passive euthanasia approach would be inappropriate. I urge the Assembly to look closely at this Bill but, most importantly, to accept that this Bill on its own does not address the problem. What will address the problem is this Bill plus addressing the issues of palliative care and good pain management
Debate (on motion by Mr Connolly) adjourned.
ASSEMBLY BUSINESS - EXTENSION OF TIME
MR BERRY (11.41): Pursuant to standing order 77E, I move:
That the time for the discussion of Assembly business be extended by 30 minutes.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
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