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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 87 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

This Bill will not permit euthanasia if the request has not been witnessed by the required witnesses. This Bill will not permit euthanasia if the doctor holds any doubts about the patient's voluntary and uncompelled desire that the request should be carried out. This Bill will not permit euthanasia where an elderly person is influenced by the burden on the family compulsion. This Bill will not permit euthanasia if the patient gives any indication of reluctance during any part of the procedures. This Bill will not permit euthanasia if the request is tainted by any form of inducement or pressure on the patient by others.

We hear much about slippery slopes in this debate. Some slippery slope arguments we have seen are merely misrepresentations of the laws and their safeguards. The more honest slippery slope argument holds that law reform of this kind leads society to adopt even more reform in the future. Even if we were to assume that this is true, it is plainly an anti-democratic sentiment, suggesting that the society does not have the right to think for itself. In fact, this argument is not about the future but the present, for those who make these arguments are arguing that citizens never have the right to think for themselves but must always obey values dictated to them. Often the dictator is to be found in the individual's interpretation of their own god.

Many have said that improved palliative care is the solution, a panacea which will render euthanasia law reform unnecessary. Of course, it is no such thing. We should do all we can by way of medicine to relieve pain. That we surely all agree upon. But until the day comes when we can relieve the pain of all who are suffering, the case for individuals having the right to choose the manner of their exit remains every bit as strong. This is yet another feint by those who are increasingly desperate to talk down law reform by any means they can. I am sure we all hope that the day will come when palliative care will be so good, when pain and suffering are eliminated to such an extent, that no-one will make the choice to terminate that suffering. Good palliative care and voluntary active euthanasia go hand in hand. They are not alternatives at opposite ends of a spectrum.

It is often said that we should keep emotion out of this debate, but I would like to inject just a little at this point. I would like to read some examples of letters received by my office and other parliamentary offices since the public began to recognise that there was potential for reforming law in this area. Many of these letters have moved me. I know that members have received similar letters and I have no doubt that they also have been moved. One of the letters which sought to persuade a senator to vote against the Andrews Bill in Federal Parliament included the following:

He -

that is Mr Andrews -

has obviously not watched his own mother die an excruciatingly painful death, with cancer, when all palliative care and drugs have failed to ease her torment and she has begged him day after day, with the little strength she had left, to kill her and end her suffering. No, my mother was not an old woman, she died at fifty-five after five major operations and two years intermittent hospitalisation ...

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