Page 4390 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 19 November 1991
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that point. We are not preparing the Bill because we wish to ensure that the concerns of our community are fully taken into account, fully canvassed in debate on this very important issue.
Mr Moore has pointed out some of the reasons why the issue of euthanasia concerns everybody in our community. I would like to reiterate some of those views put by Mr Moore. The issue concerns every one of us as individuals and every one of us as family members. It also concerns us as members of groups which may represent particular interests or particular points of view. Mr Deputy Speaker, Mr Moore pointed out that we will all die, but I think perhaps more relevant to this debate is the fact that we will all be close to someone who is dying or who is about to die. It is at that point that we will really need to consider what is in that person's best interests.
The issue of euthanasia, as Mr Humphries has pointed out, also concerns closely the health professionals. I think that we could all appreciate that health professionals - and particularly doctors, who are bound by the Hippocratic oath - need to have the issues debated and the guidelines drawn before they are exposed to any risk or any allegations that might be made about their professional practice. I was a bit alarmed by Mr Humphries' apparent disquiet about doctors and their motives in dealing with dying patients, Mr Deputy Speaker; but I think he is right to raise the issue that we do need to look at the question of all health professionals in their care of people who are dying.
I do not believe, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the churches' views are irrelevant in this debate. Mr Moore has taken issue with some expressed church views, and I think that many of those views have been expressed in intemperate language. But it is the case that many people turn to the church when they are dying, when they are suffering a terminal illness or when they are in some other circumstance of family catastrophe. The churches' views, I think, should be taken into account. But more importantly at this point, the church should have an opportunity to put a view other than in the Canberra Times. We know how things are reported. They are reported in a dramatic and confrontationist fashion. This debate ought to be taken out of that style and put into a more serious and concerned light. In that light, I think the churches' views should be taken into account.
There is, of course, a broad spectrum of steps which might be taken, Mr Deputy Speaker, in terms of allowing people to die. They range, as Mr Moore pointed out, from the generally passive steps to active steps. Many people think a person exercising the right to refuse treatment or the creation of a living will is a reasonable first step to take. Right at the other end of the spectrum, of course, we have the legal protection of doctors or others who actively assist people to die. I think that is the extreme end of the spectrum of debate on euthanasia.
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