Drowning in Desperation to Dying with Dignity Q&A : Season 8 Episode 32

Discuss the Questions Here are the questions our panel faced this week. Tell us what your answer would be or what you think our panellists need to say. REFUGEE INTAKE Marcus Rigg asked: Mike Baird, you said last week: "We cannot see the images we have seen, and feel the things we have felt, and then go back to business as usual." And yet, it seems it is still business as usual with Tony Abbott refusing to increase the overall yearly intake of refugees. While I applaud any effort to help the Syrian people, when will Tony Abbott face the fact that whether we like it or not Australia is going to have to play a more active role in this global humanitarian crisis? REFUGEE QUEUE Nilesh Nandan asked: Are some refugees more equal than others? I don’t see the point of a reallocation within an existing quota, if the total quota itself is not increased. What do we say to refugees from the other regions, currently in the queue, who have had their place put back? BOMBING SYRIA Narelle Clark asked: My question is for Chris Bowen. Politics reached a new low when the ALP and Greens accused the PM of considering sending the Australian Airforce into Syria to improve his polling numbers. What solution does the ALP have for the refugee crisis if it does not include making Syria safe for the Syrians? POLITICS IS A CIRCUS Sheila Dhillon asked: Catherine Livingstone, when my grandfather first visited Australia from Singapore in 1996, I took him for a live sitting at Parliament House. After 20 minutes, he looked at me and whispered, "Are you sure you want to call this your home? This country looks like it is being run by a bunch of monkeys in a circus?" 20 years on, I have not sought an Australian citizenship. Not because I don't love this beautiful country, but simply because it would be a waste of a vote either way. As the leading industry body propagating economic and social progress in the national interest of this country, what is your biggest challenge with our political landscape at the moment and how would you rate the circus today? UNGOVERNABLE? Bill Bisset asked: Given Rupert Murdoch's comment that: Australia is “almost ungovernable” because of the Senate, the Greens and Labor’s relationship with unions, how can any elected Australian government hope to manage the economy when you have a hostile Labor opposition not passing reasonable budgetary measures to enable the government to effectively run the economy? My question is to Chris Bowen. How would Labor raise the necessary tax income to pay down the national debt whilst maintaining existing welfare and social programs if they were in government? GST REGRESSIVE Simone Black asked: Why is increasing the GST considered one of the best options for raising revenue given it is a regressive tax? THE DISRUPTED ECONOMY Maria MacNamara asked: Catherine Livingstone, you have successfully led companies at the leading edge of innovation with the CSIRO, Cochlear and Telstra on your resume. You warned that rapid advances in technology are rendering traditional business models obsolete and that unless Australia adapts we will be overwhelmed within a decade. If that's the case, was there sufficient representation from the innovation and entrepreneurship and start-up sector at the recent National Reform Summit? ASSISTED DYING A video question from John Grayson: My name is John Grayson, I'm 34 years old and I have a terminal brain tumor. My question is open to the panel. When I eventually die I am going to end up with right hand side paralysis, blindness, being mute. I will end up in severe chronic pain. I will have cognitive impaired ability and I will eventually die. What I want to know is why I'm forced to go through that torture? Why can I not put something in place now, that say, when I get to a certain ability I can chose to end my own life? We do not force animals to go through that torture, why do we force humans? PALLIATIVE CARE Yvonne McMaster asked: I am a retired palliative care doctor, now a full time advocate for improved palliative care services in Australia. My question for Mike is, what sort of death do you want? I ask because as Catherine Livingstone pointed out earlier this year, 70% of Australians would prefer to die at home, but only 14% do. The majority die in hospitals at a cost in NSW alone of a billion dollars a year. When will governments recognize that adequately resourced palliative care would improve and enhance end of life care while saving hundreds of millions of dollars?