The Victorian Greens have second read their Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill today to urge the Labor Government to consider further reforms that could be made to improve access to VAD in Victoria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It follows the Labor Government\u2019s recent announcement that they will amend Victoria\u2019s legislation, including removing the gag clause that prevents doctors from discussing VAD with their patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Victorian Greens have strongly welcomed the announcement but say that these changes will only just bring Victoria into line with other states and still behind some jurisdictions and there is more that can be done to make our laws more compassionate, by removing barriers and improve access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the first legislation of its kind in Australia, Victoria\u2019s VAD laws took a very cautious approach and what were initially intended to be safeguards are now barriers preventing people who should be able to access VAD from being able to access it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Victorian Greens first introduced their VAD Bill to Parliament last year and have extensively consulted with stakeholders, now following the government\u2019s announcement they\u2019re calling for a full scope of reforms to be considered to improve access.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One key difference in the Greens\u2019 Bill is expansion of the type of practitioners allowed to provide VAD assessments and support by enabling more GPs and nurse practitioners to provide these services. The Greens say that strict requirements to see certain types of specialists is creating barriers, especially for regional Victorians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Victorian Greens health spokesperson who is from regional Victoria and a GP herself, Dr Sarah Mansfield, said that the opportunity to update these laws doesn\u2019t come around often and that we want the best possible laws to be passed swiftly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Victorian Greens health spokesperson, Dr Sarah Mansfield:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019ve been really heartened to see the Labor Government\u2019s commitment to update these laws, but the changes they are proposing only go so far, and we could be doing more to make our laws more compassionate and remove barriers to accessing voluntary assisted dying in Victoria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe opportunity to amend these laws doesn\u2019t come up often, and we don\u2019t want to just see this as yet another thing on Labor\u2019s to do list. We are ready to work with the government now to make much needed changes to our VAD laws so that people who want to access choice and dignity at the end of their lives can do so.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Victorian Greens have second read their Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill today to urge the Labor Government to consider further reforms that could be made to improve access to VAD in Victoria. It follows the Labor Government\u2019s recent announcement that they will amend Victoria\u2019s legislation, including removing the gag clause that prevents doctors from discussing … Continue reading “GREENS OUTLINE FURTHER REFORMS NEEDED TO PREVENT BARRIERS FROM ACCESSING VOLUNTARY ASSISTED DYING”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31709,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31708\/revisions\/31709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}