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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 9 Hansard (22 November) . . Page.. 2259 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

To create an exception to the general prohibition of intentional killing would inevitably open the way to its further erosion ... Decriminalisation of voluntary euthanasia would give rise to more and more grave problems than those it sought to address.

I agree with that too. The Canadian inquiry found - and this is a matter I raised in this Assembly not so long ago, when Mr Moore first tabled his Bill as a discussion paper - that opinion poll results may not give a valid picture of public attitudes; that results need to be interpreted after analysis of the questions and of respondents' knowledge of the issues. American opinion polls indicating 80 per cent of those polled as favouring euthanasia are at variance with formal votes recording only 45 per cent in favour. So, as I pointed out recently, it depends on the nature of the question and the people who are answering the question, whether it is an impersonal thing or a personal thing for them, and it depends on the occasion. I have grave difficulties with this issue, and I believe that we have some eminent authorities to whom we should listen carefully.

To conclude, I would like to quote from two letters. I have not been able to obtain the authority of these people to name them, so I will not. The first letter is from a vascular surgeon from Melbourne. He begins:

I wish to state my absolute opposition to euthanasia.

I will not read the whole letter, but he says that the proposal for active euthanasia is extremely dangerous, it totally ignores the sanctity of life, it totally ignores morality, it totally ignores Christian ethics, and it does not allow for mistakes in diagnosis or estimates of prognosis. That is from a vascular surgeon. He goes on:

It is unquestionably true that with modern palliative care there is no need whatever for euthanasia. If a patient requests euthanasia, it is an indication that the patient is not being adequately cared for.

Finally, he says:

It is interesting to note that most dying patients will have quite potent opiate drugs by their beds. Usually there will be quite sufficient amount of such drugs for the patient to use them to commit suicide should the patient so wish. In fact, I have never seen this happen. In fact, most dying cancer patients have a strong desire to live as long as possible, provided they are well treated and pain and discomfort is well controlled. The scenario of cruel doctors keeping patients alive on machines in terrible pain when they have no hope is an utter fiction, and this scenario is used by the proponents of euthanasia ad nauseam. It never happens.

That is from a vascular surgeon. I think he knows what he is talking about. Finally, I quote from a letter from an ordinary citizen in this city, a lady who has obviously given the matter considerable thought. She says:

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