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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 2 Hansard (26 February) . . Page.. 448 ..

MR OSBORNE (continuing):

studies show that 30 per cent of health expenditure occurs in the last year of a person's life and 10 per cent in the second last year of their life. Mr Speaker, the billions of dollars that industrialised societies spend annually on care for the aged and other supposed medical "burdens" has gradually caused the development of a subtle antagonism towards them. The genuine assets of a society are its people; but, when economic principles are allowed to dominate, some of those assets can easily become the enemy. Consequently, there is a real danger that a person's consent to euthanasia may not, in fact, be a perfectly free and voluntary act.

This point is most important, as much of the talk about euthanasia focuses on the voluntary nature of the desire to die. This pressure is increased dramatically, Mr Speaker, by people like Professor Peter Singer, one of our nation's most vocal supporters of euthanasia and a longstanding - and, fortunately, unsuccessful - political candidate for the Greens in Victoria. Peter Singer - who openly advocates the killing of deformed babies, based on his belief that "killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person", and the killing of the mentally disabled, based on economic grounds and his belief that they are "non-people" - is enough to get most people feeling nervous. Singer's philosophy, which encompasses this Bill before us today, specifically degrades, and is meant to degrade, the value of life of the aged, the terminally ill and the disabled. I do not know who among us today agrees with all that Peter Singer does, but the philosophy of this Bill is fundamentally the same as his - and that ought to be setting off alarm bells for all of us here in this place. Mr Speaker, Peter Singer has also stated that "there is a limit to the burden of dependence which any society can carry". Even if this is true, Mr Speaker, we have not reached that point in Canberra yet, thank goodness.

Mr Speaker, the aged and the terminally ill are vulnerable to pressure to "do the right thing", as they are already aware of the degree of their dependence and associated feelings of worthlessness. Our society must send a clear message to them that it is committed to ongoing sound moral values regarding their worth. It is up to us as legislators to reinforce this message by protecting this group and other vulnerable groups from becoming easy prey to economic exploitation.

I would like to briefly quote from a letter that I received recently. It said:

The voluntariness of any case of legal euthanasia would always be in question. Legal euthanasia would inevitably lead to some people feeling pressure to put their hand up for "voluntary" euthanasia.

You need only reflect on former Governor General Bill Hayden's comments a couple of years ago when he suggested that some residents of nursing homes were of no further use to society and that "there is a point when the succeeding generations deserve to be disencumbered - to coin a clumsy phrase - of some unproductive burdens".

There is no doubt therefore that some people will not hesitate to suggest euthanasia to a vulnerable person. This pressure is a very real danger against which it is impossible to legislate.

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