Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I remarked to one of my colleagues somewhat earlier that I think this is probably the fourth or fifth time that I have managed to speak on a very similar bill which purports to restore the rights of the Northern Territory and the ACT or to give them rights to which they are simply not entitled. They are constitutional arrangements. The Northern Territory and the ACT are not states. In fact, the Northern Territory rejected what was seen as a fait accompli to become a state and chose to still be subject to federal intervention and the ability of the federal parliament to override the state and territory laws. I think the people of the Northern Territory have rendered their verdict, and they are absolutely delighted with their current state of play. So this is not really about our constitutional arrangements, because that would be a matter for the people of the ACT and the Northern Territory. It is not really about states' rights, because the two jurisdictions we are talking about are not states.

The Restoring Territory Rights (Assisted Suicide Legislation) Bill 2015 is just another vehicle to change how we treat and value life in this country. It is an ideological crusade for people who support euthanasia. I am not one of them. I respect that others have different views. We are going to hear them from some of my colleagues on my side of the chamber and the other side of the chamber. At its essence, this is about euthanasia.

Of course, Senator Leyonhjelm and others in this case always refer to the polls and how much widespread support there is for euthanasia. I can understand that, at any sort of superficial level, when people ask, 'Should you be able to relieve yourself or get assistance in relieving yourself of a terrible death or pain?' the instinctive answer from people is, 'Yes, yes, we should be able to do that.' But it is the same principle that applies if you ask people: should the death penalty apply in this country? Something like 70 or 80 per cent of the Australian people go, 'Yes, it should.' I am opposed to that as well. I think there is a serious and significant problem when we start asking the state to endorse the ability of individuals to take the life of other individuals in these sorts of circumstances.

In the case in point, when this was allowed in the Northern Territory, we had individuals who died who were not terminally ill. They were suffering from depressive illness maybe, but they certainly did not have a disease that was going to take their life. So we have a circumstance where, no matter what is said, the only evidence we have in this country is that it does not only apply to those who are terminally ill. In the only instance, which is in the Northern Territory, we found that a lady who had no significant illness was killed with the assistance of a medical practitioner. That, I think, proves the point that you cannot have absolute safeguards in introducing euthanasia into this country.

It strikes me as a little incongruous because I look at the example, say, of the Netherlands. The Netherlands was one of the first countries, if not the first country, in the world to introduce euthanasia. I think it was in 2001 that it was introduced. Of course, there were appropriate promises of safeguards then as well. There was never going to be any abuse of the system. It was only going to apply to those people who were truly terminally ill. Theo Boer, who was one of the advocates for it—in fact, he was a professor, I think, of ethics—in 2007 wrote:

… there doesn't need to be a slippery slope when it comes to euthanasia. A good euthanasia law, in combination with the euthanasia review procedure, provides the warrants for a stable and relatively low number of euthanasia.

Many of his colleagues drew a very similar conclusion. Indeed, for the first five years after it became law, physician induced deaths remained level. They even fell in some years. But Mr Boer went on to say how wrong he was—how terribly wrong he was—and that the stabilisation in numbers was 'a temporary pause'. In 2008, the number of cases started to grow and grow and grow. We now have circumstances in the Netherlands whereby children can request to be euthanased.

I find this quite extraordinary. There is no slippery slope, of course! We are told again and again and again that there are always going to be safeguards. We spend tens of millions of dollars dealing with mental illnesses and suicidal thoughts, preventing young people and adults and older people from committing suicide, helping them with treatment, and yet, in the place where physician assisted suicide was introduced in 2001, we now have circumstances where children can request to be euthanased.

It is strange that those who often are the strongest advocates for the intervention programs to prevent suicide in young people and adults are the same ones who are saying we should be allowing individuals to determine when they want to die. I just find that extraordinary. It is a duality that is not consistent. The evidence demonstrates, overseas, the slippery slope that does eventuate. As soon as you put a framework and a parameter around the ability for one individual to say, 'I have the right to die, and I want someone to help me die,' the boundaries upon which that is levelled are going to be continually challenged until we have circumstances, as has been demonstrated, like in the Netherlands, where children can be killed because they view a few people and say: 'I feel like killing myself. I don't want to live. I'm depressed. I'm ill.' We have circumstances where it is no longer physician assisted suicide; it is conducted, sometimes without reference to the patient, by nurses. The cases of that are legion.

I would say that, no matter what is implemented, euthanasia or any assisted suicide legislation can never be made safe from abuse. I note that Senator Leyonhjelm made the point that this is not about knocking granny off to get the family home or anything else, but it can place undue pressure on the elderly, who may feel they are a burden on their families and who may feel that they do not have a contribution to make anymore to society. I reject that in its entirety, but that is how some people may feel. They may feel despondent. They may feel that age has denied them of some faculties and they would prefer to die as a result. Do we really think it is right?

There was a case of 45-year-old twins in Belgium I think who were advised that they were going to go blind. They decided that they would rather die instead. If it is okay for 45-year-olds who are going blind to say, 'I don't want to live any more,' and die, what is the difference with a 30-year-old, a 25-year-old or a 22-year-old? Shall we continue down that path? When is it? Is it only 18-year-olds? Why then in the Netherlands are children allowed to make these requests?

The challenge for those who advocate in this space is to demonstrate that the slippery slope does not exist. The challenge for them is to explain to the Australian people why there is a divergence of approach. At what point does one have the right to die and at what point does society have a responsibility to help people get through whatever the issues are that are causing them to want to take their own lives? We need to protect the vulnerable. This suggestion, dressed up as territory rights legislation, does not protect the vulnerable. It makes them even more vulnerable—vulnerable to external pressures and vulnerable to their own weaknesses and health issues. It virtually says, 'We don't value your life because it may be impaired in some way, shape or form.' I think that is absolutely wrong because we can all be vulnerable.

We know that people's mental health issues can come and go. They can receive treatment and recover. We have seen that so many times. It is wonderful that we have the medical and psychiatric care and appropriate medications and we can help people through counselling. Yet what we are basically saying through legislation like this is: 'That might be too hard. It might not work.' At what point do we say, 'We are not going to try it'? Is it because the individual says, 'No, I don't want any help'? With mental health issues, depression and things like that you cannot help how you feel. If you feel like you want to die, it is up to us to help you through that and to try to stop that from happening because every person has a contribution to make and we should value their life just as we value our own.

I also make the point that this sort of legislation built around euthanasia causes an extreme mindset change for medical professionals. I am not a medical professional. I have tremendous respect for their integrity. I know there are many medical professionals who feel that being part of an assisted suicide program for an individual is something that compromises their medical ethics, and there would be others of course who have a different view. For the state to enlist the help of medical professionals whose Hippocratic oath is to do no harm and assist others, particularly in trying to help them recover from illness, is I think a direct challenge to what that profession has always been.

Medical professionals make many judgements, particularly when it comes to palliative care, where the treatment can often result in the death of the patient but it is done under the auspices of relieving pain and suffering. There are always opportunities. As palliative care has increased in its effectiveness I think a case for euthanasia is entirely unnecessarily and, quite frankly, dangerous over the course of time. The dangers are abundant for anyone who really wants to become aware of them. We have seen circumstance after circumstance where euthanasia has been applied under circumstances which would never be envisaged by this parliament.

A 44-year-old woman was euthanased because she had anorexia. We spend huge amounts of money on intervention programs to save people from anorexia. It is a debilitating illness. It is something you can recover from. We spend an enormous amount of support, time, love and compassion trying to help people recover from this. If a 44-year-old woman can be euthanased because she has anorexia, do you make the case for a 19-year-old, an 18-year-old or a 15-year-old if they have the same rights? This is the sort of slippery slope that comes on in.

In 2014 the Belgian Chamber of Representatives voted 86 to 44 to allow for children to be euthanased. Remember it was never going to happen. Go back to all the debates—'It is never going to happen. We are never going to allow this to happen.' But now it has happened. In Belgium, the number of euthanasia cases in 2012 increased by 25 per cent, and that was only after it was legislated and legalised in 2002. Seventy-five per cent of euthanasia cases in the 2011 to 2013 time period in Belgium were for cancer, seven per cent were for progressive neuromuscular disorders—Parkinson's disease et cetera—and 18 per cent were for other conditions. It sort of opens up a dystopian world view—'I've got an other condition.' It could be depression. It could be any other mental health issue—not feeling good, or, 'I've got anorexia.' They are other conditions.

So it was not just for terminally ill patients, just as it was not in the Northern Territory when euthanasia was legalised there. Sixty-nine per cent of euthanasia was performed on patients aged from 40 to 79 years, so only about 30 per cent was for that truly latter-stage demographic, the plus-79s—the 80-year-plus age group. So people aged from 40 to 79 were the bulk of them. A hundred and ninety-four cases over those two years, which is about nine per cent, involved patients whose deaths were not foreseeable in the short term, and two per cent of cases involved unconscious patients who had earlier signed advance directives. It is very easy to sign an advance directive and say, 'Well, if I'm unconscious I don't want to live,' until you are not given that choice anymore. Circumstances change. What happens if you have signed it 10 years before? Is there a time limit on it? What if your mental health condition is different from when you have signed those sorts of things?

When this debate is opened up—and it is a perennial debate that is going to continue, I am sure, many times—I am continually struck by the inconsistencies that are applied to the right to die but then to society's obligation to protect people from their wish to die, because they want to have it both ways here, and it does not work. I happen to believe, and quite passionately, that every life is precious. I think that we have an obligation to help people through troubled times, and I think we have an obligation to provide people with the best possible palliative care that we can. It is not through any cruelty. It is not through any wish to see people suffer. It is simply an awareness that, once we open this Pandora's box, we do not know what is going to come out of it. The examples internationally are there for all of us to see, and there is yet to be any definitive legislative instrument anywhere in the world that can safeguard against the progression of this sort of demand.

What strikes me is that when I was a young man—or younger, I should say—I used to see a show called Logan's Run, and it was about a society where people, when they got to 30, were deemed unnecessary and not worthwhile anymore, and their lives were terminated. Logan was the chap who managed to escape and run away, and they went hunting him and everything else. That is science fiction. It is a futuristic thing. It probably has no basis in reality, but the reality is that, if we start to say that just because you feel bad at a certain age or you might be a burden on the community or you feel you are a burden on the family and you feel, 'I want to die,' that sets the benchmark. We are never going to extend that benchmark. We are never going to make it harder to reach. History demonstrates again and again and again that, once you draw a line in the sand, there are always demands for that line to be moved, and it never makes it harder to reach that line; it always become easier and easier and easier.

That is the problem. That is the risk with human nature. People think they are doing the right thing by assisting someone and making the claim that it is only going to be nonagenarians or whatever that will be availing themselves of this, but it is not. It might start that way, but then we do not know where it is going to end. But the examples overseas provide us with a very clear indication of the types of risks we face: people not even consenting to euthanasia being killed by nurses, without reference to a doctor, and cases involving children, people with anorexia and people with depressive illnesses. Just because you say, 'I don't feel like living anymore,' the response is, 'Yes, it's okay; you've got the right to get someone else to kill you.' I just find that extraordinary, and yet that is the absolute lived example. It cannot be denied by those here. They might say it will not happen here, but they cannot provide any safeguards for it whatsoever.

So once again we are debating the merits of this bill. I understand that there may be these compassionate views, however they want to dress them up. They can say this is about states' rights for the territories, but the territories are not states, and the reason the states have not enacted this sort of legislation is that they know there is no protection for it. We have to protect the vulnerable people in our community.