He said the money would be better spent in the first year of a person’s life.
“The fact is we’ve pretty much reached the limit of how old we can grow as a species,” he told the ABC after the annual Australasian aeromedical conference in Darwin.
“And yet we pour huge effort and resources into the last year of a person’s life.
“If we are doing that, we are doing that at the expense of some other point in the medical system.”
The NT Government website has been promoting August as “Seniors Month, an opportunity for seniors to get out and about and try something new and exciting”.
Mr Elferink, who also has the children and families and disability services portfolio, estimated an elderly person with a terminal illness cost the NT health system about $1 million per year.
“Think of the work that could be achieved … in the first year of life with a million dollars,” he said.
“You could probably touch hundreds of kids with that sort of money.
“I suspect if you spoke to somebody who … for argument’s sake, had end-stage renal failure and said: ‘We can continue treatment but by discontinuing treatment your grandchildren would have a better opportunity’.
“Many of those old people would say ‘Yeah I accept that’.”