Page 4786 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 1 November 2017
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children and adolescents was funded. We believe there is a clear need to design palliative care services for children, as their needs and their family’s needs are very different from those of adults. We need those services to be close to children and their families during enormously difficult times. I am very pleased to say that this better integrated, coordinated approach is much easier to access and greatly assists families to access the multiple services they need. It is very positive that we have been able to fill this gap and improve the lives of families in what can only be described as the most challenging of circumstances.
In addition to improving palliative care services for children and their families, the ACT government has also previously supported Clare Holland House and the palliative care volunteer program, as well as providing funding for research into palliative care in aged care settings. ACT Health will also be developing a specialty services plan for palliative care as part of the ongoing, territory-wide health services framework.
I acknowledge, as all members do, that assisted dying is indeed an emotive and difficult issue and, for some, a divisive issue. It is deeply personal for everyone, and many of us have been directly affected by the pain and difficulty of losing a loved one over prolonged or difficult circumstances. I acknowledge the stories shared by other members of this parliament and other parliaments, particularly in recent weeks.
Our Assembly is capable of tackling complex issues and not shying away from them. This has been demonstrated time and again and we are at our best when we tackle these complex and important issues. These are important issues to people who have elected us.
People on different sides of this debate feel strongly and I am saddened and disappointed by the opposition leader’s assertion that because this is a difficult issue our Assembly should not have the right, unlike residents in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania, to debate this issue; that our residents somehow are second-class residents; that somehow, because it is difficult, we cannot reach agreement in this chamber on making that loud and clear to our counterparts on both sides of the debate. I am sure that there are members of the Liberal and National parties who strongly feel, in representing their citizens, that they should have the right democratically through their democratically elected representatives to have this debate. It is surprising; it is disappointing.
We all acknowledge that this is a difficult issue. It is one that our community looks to us to lead on; it is one our community looks to us to weigh up, as we have seen in Victoria, a process that has enabled a considered, thoughtful and respectful debate within the community about dying. It is something that affects us all. I believe strongly it is something that this Assembly should support and send a strong, united message to the federal government that we are a mature Assembly. It is disappointing indeed to have the opposition play into the hands of those who think that the ACT Assembly is nothing more than a council that should be restricted in what it has the power to debate and to legislate for, that it would deny that opportunity to members of this Assembly to potentially have this debate through our now highly effective committee system.
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