Page 2964 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 August 2013
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I would say that, having been through that process, my views on advanced care planning and the importance of it have really been defined in the sense that what someone wants when they are able to make those decisions, compared to the pressure they are under when they are not really in a state of mind to make decisions, can be very different. And it can be very distressing for people who watch that and who understood what they thought people wanted and then, having to make those decisions on their behalf, is very difficult. If they had a plan that was clearly documented—and neither of my parents had that—and indicated exactly what they wanted to have happen, it would have made it a lot easier on the people who were around and who were having to make those decisions.
I see that all the time. I have individuals come to me, and there are cases that I am aware of, where perhaps families have been distressed by some of the choices their loved one has made or has indicated to their clinicians they wanted followed. And if that differed from what the family believed was the right course of action, it is amazing just how distressing that can be. It usually follows that person’s passing that these matters are still being agitated about what was the right decision to take.
Indeed, I have had it from doctors as well who have spoken to me and who feel kind of legally compromised at times about disagreements among families around clinical decision making. I think some of the acknowledgement through the Local Hospital Network Council’s report that looking at ways to ensure that the legal framework around advanced care plans and creating simpler, legally binding tools to enable advanced care planning is really important, and ensuring that systems are able to act upon those plans is just as important.
When we go to the issue of palliative care, this is again a hidden area of the health system. It does not get a lot of attention. It does not get attention like the emergency department or elective surgery does. For me, it has always seemed a little unusual, perhaps because this is as important as any other area of the healthcare system. There is not any quality assessment, sort of performance assessment framework, that is attached to palliative care.
But we are lucky here that our services are very high quality and that we are putting more and more into palliative care services and responding to where we think the need is the greatest, which includes people’s desire to have palliative care provided at home, and also understanding that palliative care is not just provided at the end of life, it is actually something that can be provided through an individual’s illness. At different periods, their requirements for palliative care will be different.
The government will support the amendment. I think this was getting, as Mr Rattenbury said, overly complicated. I have taken a number of questions during this parliament on the ACT Labor-Greens agreement. It was heavily canvassed in the previous parliament, and I see no reason why it should not be acknowledged. It is a factual statement.
In relation to euthanasia, I think the point Mr Rattenbury was making—and I do not want to verbal him—was around the principles of having our parliament constrained
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