Sadly, within the last seven years I have had to sit by the hospital bedside of my mother, father and best friend and see them all succumb to cancer. I have lost many relatives to cancer; three in a spate of four years apart from the above mentioned loved ones.
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Despite the heartache of seeing them fade away I was more heavily focused upon them receiving the best and most effective palliative care; and thankfully they did.
As a registered nurse I personally would find it disturbing to be part of an active patient-driven suicide process. It goes against every core fundamental I embraced in pursuit of my vocation of being a nurse some 26 years ago; “above all do no harm”.
In the ideal world I wish the powers that be could channel greater funding and resources into research and refinement into more precise palliative care.
This is a world where we are living to a much greater age where upon cancers and debilitative illnesses will become more commonplace.
I do however respectfully acknowledge the wishes and opinions of those at opposing ends of the debate.
Tony Boyd (registered nurse), Wodonga
Role of the AHA
Animal Health Australia (AHA) wanted to provide some clarification in regards to your article/opinion piece in The Border Mail on 14 October entitled ‘What about us?’ (The Border Mail, October 14).
David Everist was certainly correct in stating that AHA is a not-for-profit public company. In this capacity we manage animal health projects related to emergency animal disease response arrangements, on-farm biosecurity and market access on behalf of our members. In terms of ‘who owns it’, AHA has 33 members including the Australian government, state and territory governments and major livestock industry organisations. A full list of our members is on the AHA website.
AHA’s purpose is to assist our members and partners enhance, strengthen and protect Australia’s animal health system and deliver better outcomes for the Australian farmer. AHA members determine the policy direction and we provide a forum in which to achieve this. By doing this we serve as a conduit to facilitate trust and co-operation between industry and government on animal health matters, to sustain farms and strengthen the animal health system as a whole.
Kathleen Plowman, CEO Animal Health Australia
Priorities all wrong
I was appalled that the Turnbull Government rejected the Referendum Council’s recommendation from the Uluru Convention that there be an Indigenous advisory body to parliament enshrined in the constitution because it would be neither “desirable or capable of winning acceptance”. This is particularly frustrating considering the government has just spent $122 million of taxpayer dollars on a plebiscite consulting Australians about gay marriage when parliamentarians are supposedly elected and amply paid to make this decision.
I was looking forward to having my say in a referendum and going on the trek, described in the Uluru Convention, of truth, justice and reconciliation. I was looking forward to living in a country where we are no longer diminished because Aboriginal people are denied their rightful place in this nation, in the land they have sustainably lived in for 65,000 years, the longest continuous culture on Earth.