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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (19 February) . . Page.. 89 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

No doubt, being an ex-Politician, this letter will eventually land on politicians' desks.

All I would ask is that you give fair consideration should you have a Euthanasia Bill to consider.

If there is a God I feel sure he would not want us to suffer the way we do with terminal illness. If there isn't a God it seems sheer stupidity to suffer the results of terminal illness when the going gets too tough.

That letter was signed by the Hon. Gordon Bruce, Ex MLC and President of the Legislative Council of South Australia, a politician previously opposed to voluntary euthanasia. Who can be sure that their view would not also change when confronted with the harsh reality of agonising death? Anne Levy dedicated her Bill to the memory of her own husband and his death. She and her two young children had watched him slowly die of cancer.

Mr Speaker, I have not had such a close personal experience, and I hope that that will remain the case. However, I have watched as people at one remove have suffered unnecessarily and I have come to the compassionate conclusion in a relatively academic way. Surely it is nothing more than cruelty for the anti-euthanasia advocates to insist on the enforced application of their values to persons who are in great pain. Where is the justice when individual autonomy is suppressed by such anti-liberal values; when autonomy is suppressed by those who believe they have a direct message from their God which they are prepared to inflict on others?

In so many ways our society is changing and most of these changes are improvements. Our laws, increasingly made by parliaments rather than courts, reflect the improvements and reforms that our democratic political processes make possible. By empowering citizens, through their elected representatives, to frame the law to reflect our changing values and aspirations, our political system empowers us towards progress. Our progress takes us towards a healthier society.

This area of euthanasia law reform is an example of the reforming power of our system of government. In this area, as in so many areas, the mainstream pressure for law reform will build up until an existing legal order is replaced by one which reflects popular will, which reforms bad laws, which recognises changing attitudes to the power of the state and the rights of minorities, and which permits, above all, the free exercise of the liberty of each individual. Mr Speaker, in the end, conservatism always loses. Yet in this case, as long as conservative forces delay human progress, society and many of its people are forced to suffer. Now is the time to take up the struggle against this suffering. I commend this Bill and its ideals to the Assembly, and to all those who may be listening today.

Debate (on motion by Mrs Carnell) adjourned.

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