KEY QUOTES FROM THE DEBATE OF VOLUNTARY ASSISTED DYING LAWS IN NSW PARLIAMENT:
IN SUPPORT:
* "This is a compassionate bill. It is a considered bill. It offers choice without compromising the safeguards the community would expect." - Labor MP for Summer Hill Jo Haylen.
* "Sometimes I find my colleagues on both sides of the house have difficulty in separating that real personal view to the view of their wider community and I think that's a shame." - Geoff Provest, Nationals MP for Tweed.
* "Voluntary assisted dying, when passed, will not see one extra person die, but it will see some facing painful and undignified deaths pass a little sooner and a lot more gently... Importantly, and often ignored by opponents, it will see many not use or attempt suicide in a lonely and wretched way due to the anxiety they feel about a pending ugly and painful death." - Greg Piper, independent MP for Lake Macquarie.
* "I'm in this place as a staunch advocate of liberalism - it is the right of the individual to make decisions for themselves. That liberty should be unfettered by the views and values of others, no matter how deeply felt or well meant, if the action does not harm others." - Liberal North Shore MP Felicity Wilson.
* "Time is the most precious commodity that we have. It is free to all and can be bought by none... and if the commodity of time is the most precious thing that you have, we all must truly wonder what type of unbearable pain or anguish someone must be going through in order to call short their time on this earth." - Liberal MP for Manly James Griffin.
IN OPPOSITION:
* "It's not about the strengths or weaknesses of the safeguards, or the rights of medical practitioners, or the technicalities of who qualifies and who doesn't. It is so much bigger than all of that. This debate is fundamentally about how we treat that precious thing called human life." - Premier Dominic Perrottet.
* "(The bill) is the most heinous piece of legislation ever introduced before this parliament. The debate must be framed for what it truly involves - a failure of public policy and human rights." - Labor MP for Prospect Hugh McDermott.
* "This is open to abuse. The 2017 (voluntary assisted dying) bill I was supportive of. But I just cannot support this this bill because it doesn't have the safeguards of the previous bill. It needs to be amended or we vote it down and we do it properly." - Nationals Myall Lakes MP Stephen Bromhead.
