Government MPs are set to be granted a conscience vote on a draft bill that would allow terminally ill NSW residents aged at least 25 to end their own lives with medical assistance, once the issue goes before cabinet and the joint party room.
But unlike her predecessor Mike Baird, who in January said he would vote against a bill that is put before Parliament, Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Tuesday declined to reveal her position.
Opposition Leader Luke Foley says he would vote against legislation to allow voluntary assisted dying should it make it to the lower house, but that Labor MPs would be granted a free vote.
On Tuesday, a cross-party working group comprising Liberal MP Lee Evans, Nationals MLC Trevor Khan, Labor MLC Lynda Voltz, Greens MLC Mehreen Faruqi and independent MP Alex Greenwich unveiled details of the draft bill that is due to come before the upper house in August.
It states that a patient must be likely to die of their illness within 12 months.
The decision must be signed off by two medical practitioners, and the patient assessed by an independent psychiatrist or psychologist.
Other safeguards include a 48-hour cooling-off period, the patient's ability to rescind the decision at any time and the right for close relatives to challenge patient eligibility in the Supreme Court.
"I want an option when I can't move or eat or breathe," Ms Gabrielides, who can no longer speak, told a media conference via her iPad.
The Australian Medical Association opposes legalising voluntary euthanasia, but the draft bill received support from the NSW Nurses and Midwives' Association.
"Nurses experience death all the time and many have been very closely involved in painful deaths that are not the desired way for people to die," said its general secretary, Brett Holmes.
"At the moment certain decisions about palliative care can hasten death in a comfortable way but that is somewhat in the hands of the people administering it as to how it proceeds.
"We think the patients should have the right to have a say in that, not just the doctors."
Christian Democratic Party MLC, Reverend Fred Nile, vowed to oppose the bill arguing that "doctors are committed to saving lives, not killing patients".
But Mr Khan, whose late father asked him to help him die after being incapacitated by a stroke, said the cross party nature of the draft bill meant that the bill has "enough votes that we can shift across the aisle".
