Palliative Care NSW chief executive Linda Hansen has told a NSW Parliamentary inquiry into a proposed voluntary assisted dying bill that end-of-life care is possible in regions such as the Murrumbidgee.
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The Standing Committee on Law and Justice, chaired by Wagga-based MLC Wes Fang, this month held its first round of hearings into the bill's provisions after it passed the lower house last month.
Independent Wagga MP Joe McGirr and Liberal Albury MP Justin Clancy voted against the bill, while Nationals Cootamundra MP Steph Cooke and Shooters Murray MP Helen Dalton voted for it.
Ms Hansen told the inquiry that volunteers were a "huge benefit to every palliative care service" but there were gaps in the network "because there is no person funded to run that volunteer service".
"In some areas it is easier sometimes to run a service in rural and remote areas because the communities are very close and everybody knows everybody within the 20,000-kilometre radius of some of those services," she said.
"It does not really matter whether it is Broken Hill or on the Murrumbidgee somewhere, it does not matter where it is, if there is ... generally a volunteer manager funded and supported to recruit and manage those volunteers."
The inquiry also heard from pro-voluntary assisted dying campaigner Paul Gabrielides, who told the inquiry he had met Dr McGirr and they were "both very passionate about the equality of opportunity in regional NSW, especially for health services".
"You sit and talk about palliative care and you sit and talk about empowering people, and you are not. You are letting the community desperately down," Mr Gabrielides told the inquiry.
"The most common argument [against voluntary assisted dying] is duress and coercion: You are causing duress. You are coercing people to continue to fight on on your terms, not theirs."
The inquiry is due to report on the first sitting day of Parliament next year.
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