Stirling Griff (SA, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) recognises that:

  (i) access to appropriate pain and symptom management and being surrounded by family are most important to people who are dying,

  (ii) palliative care is not just about pain and symptom management, it is about providing meaningful social, spiritual and emotional support for families and patients,

  (iii) for many Australians, their end-of-life journey will likely be punctuated with avoidable, or unwanted admissions to hospital with the confusion, loss of dignity and loss of control that comes with it,

  (iv) Australians need to be more engaged in conversations regarding their end-of-life care wishes, and

  (v) palliative care is not just about dying, it is about living as well as you can for as long as you can;

(b) notes that Palliative Care Australia estimates that while 70 per cent of Australians wish to die at home, only around 14 per cent do so;

(c) acknowledges that the Productivity Commission's draft report into human services, released in June 2017, argued that:

  (i) there are just 213 palliative medical specialists across Australia, equating to one specialist for every 704 deaths each year,

  (ii) more community-based palliative care services are needed to enable more people who wish to die at home to do so, and

  (iii) end-of-life care in residential aged care needs to be better resourced and delivered by skilled staff;

(d) further notes Palliative Care Australia's call for a national palliative care commissioner who would examine existing palliative care services and programs nationally, in order to assess their efficiency and effectiveness in supporting terminally ill individuals and their families to live as well as possible, right to the end of life;

(e) calls on all senators to have an end-of-life conversation with their loved ones; and

(f) calls on the Government to make palliative care a health priority and appoint a national palliative care commissioner.

Question agreed to.