Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment and Water (Senate)) Share this | Hansard source

Today I rise to speak very strongly in favour of this legislation, both from the point of view of the rights of territories to legislate on behalf of their citizens and also as a supporter of the right to voluntary assisted euthanasia in controlled circumstances. The territories should be able to make these laws on behalf of their constituents just in the way the states can notwithstanding the false constitutional arguments of Senator Abetz. The reason he is false is not because he has stated the obvious power of the Commonwealth to override the territories on constitutional basis, but the fact is that the citizens of our nation support voluntary assisted euthanasia in our nation.

So if we don't let the ACT legislate on this question then, frankly, we would have to legislate on this question in response to the demand of their citizens. We know that the citizens of the ACT strongly support voluntary assisted euthanasia. We know that states like Victoria and my own state of Western Australia are making progress on those issues. Victoria's now got it. Western Australia's actively debating it at the moment. Even the states are a long way behind the views of the Australian public on this issue.

So the simple fact is, if we don't let the ACT or the Northern Territory, if it wants to, in consultation with its own Indigenous communities, legislate on this question then we would have to work out how to do it ourselves. I am a supporter of the rights of the Northern Territory and the ACT to define those questions for themselves, a supporter of the right of the Northern Territory in its own push towards statehood in time to be able to resolve these questions for itself.

As I highlighted before, there's an active debate on this issue in Western Australia going on at the moment. The Western Australian Joint Select Committee on End of Life Choices is looking into end-of-life choices to see whether there's a need for legislation to allow euthanasia for those suffering a terminal illness. The state of Victoria has now passed legislation based on the recommendations of an expert panel, and Victorians that meet the strict criteria can request access to voluntary assisted dying from June next year. I want to commend the head of the expert panel in Victoria, Professor Brian Owler. He, in fact, has described the model in Victoria as the most conservative model in the world for assisted dying. It is in fact very close to the model of Oregon, in the United States, and that instrument has existed for 20 years on their statute books without amendment.

So it is simply not legitimate for us to stand in the way of the communities of the ACT and the Northern Territory in tackling this question for themselves and in acting on it. Otherwise, as I highlighted before, this parliament would need to respond to the demand of the citizens of the ACT to legislate on this question itself, so that we, in this parliament, would pursue legislation like Victoria has, for example. I don't think that's the preferred way of doing this. We shouldn't override the ACT's right to legislate on this question. They're quite capable of addressing these issues. If we don't let them do it and we simply overrule them, we are putting our heads in the sand as to the views of Australians on this issue.

There have been a lot of opponents on this issue of euthanasia in terms of it being a 'slippery slope', and many would have heard these arguments before. That is simply an argument that conservatives gravitate to when they just plain disagree with something but do not have credible arguments to back up their position. I note, for example, that a study led by the University of Pennsylvania Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy looked at the attitudes and practices of euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide in the United States, Canada and Europe. It concluded that, despite the fact that euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are increasingly being legalised, the practice of them remains relatively rare and primarily involves patients with cancer and that existing data does not at all indicate widespread abuse of these practices.

One of the biggest problems with this debate is that parliaments take too long to decide these things, and in the meantime people are suffering. I'd like to highlight to the chamber this afternoon the case of Clive Deverall. He is a giant in public health in Western Australia. He spent more than 20 years as the head of the Cancer Council between 1977 and 1999. He was a firm advocate for consumer interests and fought tobacco and asbestos companies, solariums and snake-oil sellers selling false cancer treatments. He spent time as the president of Palliative Care WA and was determined in setting up palliative-care services. He was part of building Western Australia's first purpose-built hospice.

In 1994 he was diagnosed with a rare form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, but this diagnosis did not stop Clive. He continued as the head of the Cancer Council until 1999 and served on the board from 2007 to 2010. However, towards the end, Clive was living with unbearable pain and suffering, and on 11 March 2017 Clive took his own life. He left with poignant final words. He said:

Suicide is legal, euthanasia is not.

Clive dedicated his life to advocating for palliative-care and cancer patients, but, when the irreversible pain and suffering became too much for him, the reality of palliative care for a very few patients became very clear. In an interview with the ABC, Clive said:

Certainly I still embrace what palliative care stands for, but even with their clinical guidelines, they avoid the elephant in the room which is the very end stage patients where symptoms cannot be controlled …

He said:

The lack of compassionate law in this state—

and he was talking about Western Australia—

will force some people into taking their own lives in a fairly brutal way.

In his testimony to the parliamentary committee in Victoria, state coroner John Olle described the 240 suicides in Victoria as those ending their suffering due to an irreversible decline in their health. Poisoning, hanging and shooting were the main methods.