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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 9 Hansard (22 November) . . Page.. 2305 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

The first argument dealt with today was the notion of the slippery slope leading to abuse of the most vulnerable. Someone gave as an example of the most vulnerable Aborigines in the Northern Territory. Part of the reason that the indigenous people in the Northern Territory felt fear was the scare campaigns of the sort that led my son to ask his question. We should note that the final vote in the Northern Territory, the vote that actually carried the legislation, was from an Aborigine. Ironically, it was the one that none of the commentators had counted. Because of the scare tactics, they simply lumped everybody together and said, "Aborigines will oppose this". They missed the fact that Aborigines, like anybody else, have a range of views within their communities. In support of the argument that the slippery slope would lead to abuse of the most vulnerable, it was also said that people are at their most vulnerable when they are dying and that therefore we should oppose this legislation. Not at all. Because people are dying, because they are vulnerable, we should take more care to listen to their wishes. We should take more care not to inflict our views about social control and morality on other people.

Another argument put referred to the Remmelink report. Much was made of the number of people who die of involuntary euthanasia in the Netherlands. I think that is a very sad indictment of what happens in the Netherlands. The information was taken largely before changes were made. The survey was conducted in 1992 and changes have been made since then. Nevertheless, it was still an indictment of what happens there but a greater indictment of what happens here. Mr Speaker, we know that there are many cases of involuntary euthanasia in the Australian Capital Territory and in Australia. We have no way of recording them. We have no way of knowing just what they are, so when people point to the number of people who have died from involuntary euthanasia in the Netherlands there is no comparison. No surveys were done in the Netherlands before prosecutions for the practice of voluntary euthanasia ceased, so there is no way to compare statistics within the Netherlands, but there is also no way to compare that country with similar societies. That is what makes quoting statistics basically useless. We do not have that kind of information. A series of surveys in Australia have attempted to elicit some form of information. We know from three separate surveys that about 30 per cent of doctors have admitted that they have practised active euthanasia, but we do not know the number of patients. Mr Speaker, the difficulty with drawing conclusions from the Remmelink report is that we cannot make comparisons.

That leads me to a series of reports on overseas experiences, particularly reports from Canada, New York State, the Netherlands and the House of Lords. Why would we make our decisions based on such very different societies? It is appropriate, of course, for us to read those reports, as I have done, to draw conclusions from them and to assess what they were trying to achieve. But those societies are very different from ours. That leads me to a point that you made, Mr Speaker. Perhaps we should ensure that legislation like this is dealt with by the Federal Government rather than us. Yet most people who look at improving population health would say, "No; decisions should be made at the spot closest to the individuals, particularly such decisions as these". I would argue, Mr Speaker, that just the opposite is true. The closer the decisions are made to the people, the more effective those decisions are likely to be. A couple of members took the sanctity of life principle, as dealt with in the House of Lords report, as an absolute principle. I wonder how many members of the House of Lords at the time the task force was sent to the Falklands said, "No. The basic principle is the sanctity of life. Therefore, we cannot be involved in war". I find the level of hypocrisy in that argument quite high.

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