The new Minns Government has silently slashed funding for palliative care while bolstering funds for assisted suicide.
In a move that has shocked palliative care advocates, the NSW Government has quietly withdrawn $150 million of funding for end-of-life patients to receive palliative care and redirected the majority of these tax-payer dollars to support their implementation of assisted suicide laws which are due to commence on 28 November.
NSW State Director of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), Joshua Rowe said, “The withdrawal of funds from dignifying care at the end of life is a heartbreaking development. More, not less, funding should be directed toward care that upholds the sanctity of life, allowing end-of-life patients to experience a dignifying death with their loved ones.
“The advent of greater funding being director toward euthanasia in NSW will only further impact on the many families who believe that state-sanctioned suicide is unethical. With less funding available for end-of-life care, the expectation on doctors and nurses to participate in, and even initiate the discussion of, the administration of euthanasia only increases, forcing many to have to reconsider their career on moral grounds.”
Joshua Rowe concluded, “Precedence must be given to funding care that upholds the sanctity of life rather than a procedure that aims to extinguish life”.
ACL calls on the NSW Government to prioritise increased funding for dignifying end-of-life care and to reconsider the implementation of VAD laws.
