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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 9 Hansard (22 November) . . Page.. 2267 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

a principle can be taken to an extreme. I do not pretend that any mover of this issue in this country holds any views of that kind, and that they are motivated by anything other than compassion; I accept that that is the case, but I think that with this legislation we cross the Rubicon.

I believe that we should not go down the path of preferring quality of human life to sanctity of human life. For my own part, it is contrary to those beliefs that make up the fundamental basis of our system of social values and the laws on which they are based. I appreciate that not all members will have that view, but there are other considerations. One of those considerations is whether judgments about the value of a person's quality of life could be extended to apply to handicapped infants at birth, or the elderly or the infirm - for example, sufferers from dementia.

Related to that is the sort of message we as a society are sending to those who are chronically ill or disabled, who are amongst the most vulnerable in our community. The Australian Medical Association, which has opposed this sort of legislation consistently, has remarked upon the pressure the possibility of euthanasia may place upon a person with a terminal illness, who may feel some sense of guilt about being a burden on his or her family. Other members have spoken about that. We need to be conscious of the fact that the option of euthanasia may influence the thinking of a terminally ill patient, out of a sense of duty to family, to seek assistance with euthanasia. In such circumstances, I think we have to question whether euthanasia really is truly voluntary in the sense that we must make it for it to be truly acceptable.

One of the elements of this legislation which disturbs me most fundamentally is the very consistent and solid opposition of those people who, under Mr Moore's scheme, would be responsible for administering this legislation, that is, members of the medical fraternity. I say "consistent and solid opposition"; I am aware that there are some groups - the Doctors Reform Society is one - that take a different view. Members, I think, are well aware that those views are a very small minority of the medical profession. I have yet to meet face to face a doctor who takes a different point of view. It troubles me that we should be engineering a system which we as legislators might think in other circumstances to be praiseworthy and wonderful and acceptable and imposing it on a profession, the profession that actually has to administer it, when there is considerable concern about, indeed strong opposition to, those very principles being thrust into the framework in which they do their work.

Nor can we ignore the possibility that economic considerations may come to play a part in the way our society approaches euthanasia. Once we embrace the concept of certain lives not being worth living, it is conceivable that, with the increasing pressure on health budgets around the country and around the world, there could be a temptation to deny scarce resources to a person whose life is considered to be of poor quality, when those resources might alternatively be directed to the care and treatment of someone adjudged to have a better quality of life. Mr Connolly has made reference to that argument. I have to say, also as a former Minister for Health, that there are massive pressures on our health system and that judgments about resources, in fact, are made on a daily basis by those who administer our health system and those who practise within the health system.

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