It would be her second transplant after years of drug abuse, including heroin and amphetamines

Dr Hames said the State Government was prepared to pay for her and her father to travel to New Zealand so she could be considered for a "live" liver transplant.

I've got two questions:

One, why can't a "live" liver transplant be done in Australia?

Two, why does the Government need to pay for her to fly to NZ? I get that we as a nation feel the need to provide public hospitals, but I really don't see how we could think the Government is responsible for expenses related to procedures that are not even going to be conducted in Australia. It's not like it would be impossible for her to acquire the needed money from a charity or family members even.

I suspect this happens all the time, and we're only hearing about it in this case because she is a drug addict on her second liver already, but even in non-drug related cases (probably rare; liver failure is normally caused by drug abuse) I don't understand why this is being done by the government. If one of my friends or family where having this sort of problem and couldn't scrounge up the money I would happily loan them the couple of grand this would be at the most, and for people that don't have that option (who would be exceedingly rare) there are personal loans and plenty of charities that would be willing to help them.

--- Edited on 01/03/2010 to improve wording ---

What you should be worrying about is who is giving them access ... who sells alcohol? Not black people
...
We (indigenous people) don't have a problem.
...
(The) Aboriginal drinking problem is white people selling to them.

Yeah, because unlike white folk, Aboriginals lack the intellectual capacity to make decisions for themselves. </sarcasm> I wonder what would happen if a white guy said that Aboriginals where incapable of choosing not to waste their money on excessive alcohol? I suspect he'd be lambasted as a racist jerk and rightfully so. I'm not aware of any evidence that suggests that Aboriginals have significantly less intellectual capacity then whites, but perhaps Mr. Dingo is aware of something I'm not?

Can we please move on as a society and acknowledge that Aboriginals, just like every other human race, have the capacity to not be alcoholic dead-beats?

They [the High Court] ruled that outside exceptional cases, hotel owners and licensees "owe no general duty of care at common law to customers ... (requiring) them to monitor and minimise the service of alcohol or to protect customers from the consequences of the alcohol they choose to consume".

This is good news, and reading through the comments most people seem to agree, though there are a few detractors.