Dr. Peter Allcroft:

I would agree that they can be complementary. Regarding palliative care spend in our state, by legislation, our health minister must report annually to the parliament the palliative care spend and no money can be taken from the palliative care budget to allocate to voluntary assisted dying. If an actuarial study was done, voluntary assisted dying per completed death may prove to be more expensive than palliative care because of the teams involved such as the navigation team, the pharmacy team, the health department team and the clinicians involved. If an actuarial study was done, it might prove assisted dying per completed death to be more expensive.