Page 2899 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 September 1994
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We are not the United States; there have not been any cases here where doctors have been taken to court for such acts. In fact, there have been very few cases where you doctors have been taken to court, and for a very good reason. They do have to exercise due care and skill. They have to exercise their expertise. If things do go wrong, it is often very hard to say - unless someone ends up with a pair of scissors stapled inside their stomach - that the doctors actually have been negligent there. As a practising lawyer, I have been involved in a number of legal cases where there has been a question of medical negligence. Invariably, it is a very hard thing to prove. There are probably some very good reasons for that, by the very nature of the medical profession. They do deal with questions of life, injury and death and, despite their excellent efforts to save life, people do die.
I suppose that I go back to the old proposition: If it is not broken, do not fix it. We have seen many situations of very well-meaning attempts to regulate, to legislate, to rectify perceived wrong or perhaps to rectify situations that could be improved. Quite often those attempts, because of the legislation, rather than assisting, actually end up hindering to an extent in certain situations. It is a totally different situation, but the Family Law Act 1975 was trumpeted as a great advance on the old Matrimonial Causes Act 1959, and in many ways it certainly was; it simplified divorce; it simplified a number of areas. That, however, has become an incredibly complex piece of legislation, with constant amendments and constant trauma, and more people have suffered as a result of that, and it has caused more consternation in the community than the old Act it replaced, the Matrimonial Causes Act, ever did. Yet it was put in place with the very best intentions.
Legislation is not a panacea for everything. It is there for when there is a perceived need, that there must be a change, that a situation is wrong and it has to be altered. I really wonder whether that is the case here. I do not believe, looking at all the arguments that have been put up today, that there is a need here to regulate, that there is a need at this point in time to legislate. Accordingly, I will be voting against this Bill. I might say, however, that, as I can count, it is obvious that this Bill will be approved in principle. There are a number of amendments which would make the legislation that is sitting before the Assembly better, in my opinion. Accordingly, I will vote for any sensible amendments that will make this piece of legislation as workable as possible, even though I do have some grave reservations about the need, which is why I intend to vote against this Bill in principle.
MR STEVENSON (12.16): Why would someone decide to die? When I talk about deciding to die, this Bill allows someone to remove medical treatment when they may have a terminal illness. It allows them to make that decision.
Let me look at the definition of "terminal illness". We have all heard of many cases where people have been told that they have a terminal illness, that they will be dead soon. We all know of cases where people were told that, and they are living decades later. The idea of terminal illness is purely in the mind of the beholder and the understanding they have of what illness is.
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