Congratulations to tonymax and 23,000 others

[Admin]

Forum member TonyMax and many others collected signatures on a petition to the NSW parliament for an urgency debate on cuts to palliative care in the state.

The petition, prompted by Yvonne McMaster needed 10,000 signatures to bring about an urgency debate in parliament.

23,000 signatures were collected, and last night the urgency debate happened.

Here's Tony's news:

Attended NSW Parlt tonight for urgency debate on palliative care cuts prompted by Yvonne McMaster 23000 strong petition.

Most of the Cancer Voices NSW team were there together with David and Pam Sandoe and a number of prostate cancer support group members from northern Sydney – plus many others.

Altogether we had about 50-60 people and packed out the public gallery.

Barry O’Farrell opened with an impassioned speech and confirmed that the large cuts in 2009 in northern Sydney that we were talking about were real.

He announced that he has given instructions that the funding was to be reinstated immediately and indicated that we would not have to go through this process again.

Jillian Skinner the Health Minister indicated that a thorough look at the adequacy of palliative care funding throughout the whole of NSW was being undertaken and that safeguards against the siphoning of palliative care money into other areas would be instituted.

Both the Premier and Health Minister congratulated Yvonne for the extraordinary job she had done, thanked us all for attending and all the people who had worked on and signed the petition.

Altogether a very successful and satisfying evening.

Our congratulations go to Tony and all others who contributed!