'You actually do have a choice': Kay Hull calls for better end of life support

Former member for Riverina Kay Hull called for greater funding towards palliative care services in Riverina towns on the first regional day of proceedings of the Special Commission of Inquiry into Healthcare Funding at the Wagga Courthouse this week.

On Monday, Mrs Hull called for more MLHD funding to enable healthcare facilities to remain open 24/7 in communities such as Temora, combined with greater GP access to a palliative specialist, arguing this would help stop patients being "shipped into Wagga" from towns further afield.

Mrs Hull, the Palliative Care Enhancement Council chair, is herself all too familiar with palliative care, having suffered the death of her husband Graeme from pancreatic cancer in 2012.

Reflecting on the final days and weeks she spent with him, Mrs Hull said her husband was fortunate to have the care that he did.

"They said he was going into a diabetic coma at home... [and] I was able to get him into palliative care," she said.

Mrs Hull said this helped stabilise Graeme.

"He [then] came home and they gave him three more weeks of quality life," she said.

Mrs Hull meanwhile raised concerns that the MLHD's palliative care nursing team is "not sufficient" to adequately cover the vast health district and argued more funding would help improve this situation.

When asked on the possibility of delivering virtual or remote palliative care services, Mrs Hull argued that was not the preference.

"That's [merely] the fallback if you can't have face to face [services]," she said.

Mrs Hull argued the lack of adequate support services for those reaching the end of their life in rural and regional areas was not a good situation, especially when cast against the introduction last year of the state's new voluntary assisted dying (VAD) laws.

The new laws, which came into force in November 2023, mean patients expected to die within six months can ask for medical assistance to end their lives.

At the time, Wagga MP Dr Joe McGirr raised concerns that funding to palliative care might be cut as VAD came in.

Mrs Hull said the introduction of voluntary assisted dying laws have "left us in a significantly difficult place."

She raised serious concerns that some people in regional and rural areas, facing a lack of support, may feel like their only option is voluntary assisted dying.

"You actually do have a choice," she said.

"If we're not going to think of end of life as a health issue that needs funding and support and access to specialty services, then we're not doing our job in that we're not giving those rural and remote NSW residents a choice."

On the first day of public hearings at Wagga, the former federal politician also decried the state of general practice and called for GPs to be shown greater respect.

"There has to be more respect for GPs," she said.

Mrs Hull noted the declining number of medical graduates opting for a career in primary health care, instead choosing to specialise in a different field.

But she reminded those at the inquiry that general practitioners are themselves specialists "right across the board and we need [more] respect for that".

She said that lack of respect was a problem seen "right across the health system".

The inquiry continues on Tuesday and runs until Friday.