Wagga advocates for euthanasia, Dying with Dignity NSW, campaigning for assisted dying laws in NSW

Geoff Burch is one of about 15 people, some united by personal tragedy, who are preparing to campaign in Wagga for NSW Parliament to legalise the procedure for the terminally ill.

"If I reached a point where I was terminally ill, and I qualified under the legislation, then I'm sure that would be much easier on my children, if I could sit down with them ... and they knew that I was going to do this," Mr Burch said.

Advocacy group Dying with Dignity NSW is calling for a voluntary assisted dying bill to be introduced to State Parliament next year, after a previous attempt failed to pass the upper house by one vote in 2017.

Dying with Dignity NSW president Penny Hackett said the organisation was about to launch a petition in an bid to get voluntary assisted dying "back on the parliamentary agenda" in her state.

"We would just say, 'Why shouldn't the people of NSW have the same rights as people in Victoria and [possibly] soon Tasmania and Queensland?'," she said.

"We want bipartisan support and cooperation for the benefit of the community."

Tasmania's Parliament is likely to follow Victoria and Western Australia in legalising euthanasia for terminally ill adults who meet certain criteria, while Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has committed to introducing a similar bill in February.

Ms Hackett called on members of NSW Parliament to respect "the community's wishes", citing a 2017 survey by Roy Morgan which found 85 per cent of a "representative cross-section" of 1386 Australian adults supported assisted dying for terminally ill patients.

She said Dying with Dignity NSW is hoping for similar voluntary assisted dying laws to those in Western Australia, which are expected to come into effect in July next year.

There, a number of "safeguards" are in place for patients who must have a terminal illness with a prognosis of six months left to live, or 12 months in the case of neurodegenerative conditions like motor neurone disease.

Patients must be assessed by two medical practitioners and be acting "without coercion" and with "decision-making capability".

Critics of euthanasia have voiced concerns about the potential for sick or elderly people to be taken advantage of, while others fundamentally disagree with the idea of doctors aiding someone to take their own life through the prescription of lethal medication.

Cardiologist and chairman of Wagga's Palliative Care Alliance Gerard Carroll believes euthanasia is inappropriate and said, in his view, good end of life care was the best way to help terminally ill patients "die with dignity".

"In my view there needs to be an inherent respect for human life. And the role of the medical profession is not to terminate life but to help quality of life and to fix and prevent disease where possible," Professor Carroll said.

Tumut's Vicki Yan wrote to a number of parliamentary representatives about euthanasia after the "heartbreak" of witnessing her father's slow and painful death from a terminal illness.

Ms Yan said her father John, an "honest hard-working man" from Temora, fought testicular and bowel cancer intermittently for most of her life until he died in 2017 at the age of 72.

"Everybody should have the right to choose how they leave the world. I believe, personally, that my dad, after everything he went through, he earned the right to choose," Ms Yan said.

She said her father became a "desperate man" who contemplated taking his own life during a chilling physical decline that ended with a "horrific" stay in hospital.

"I was willing him to die. I was standing there saying, 'You can do this dad'. He was dying, whether he liked it or not but by the end that choice was taken away from him," Ms Yan said.

"I can remember in his last two weeks, one of his friends saying to me, 'If your dad was a racehorse, it'd be Phar Lap, because he just keeps going'.

"I'll never forget that."

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