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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 2 Hansard (26 February) . . Page.. 498 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

Accepting a system where people who are suicidal can ask a doctor to kill them involves crossing a line which no Parliament in any other country of the world has been willing to cross.

I am not too sure that she is quite right there, because of the Netherlands situation. She continued:

Only a selfish society would formally treat its most vulnerable members as a burden.

It is a law that can be easily extended, it has its most devastating impact on the most vulnerable, it creates a new and terrible pressure on people who are dying and it has already resulted in some of those who desperately need health care, refusing to be treated because of fear.

Those are just a couple of the letters that I received. I do not necessarily accept everything in either of them. Indeed, opinion polls often can be manipulated, but there are some interesting points raised in relation to that, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker.

Our society places great value on life. It is something, I suppose, that is part of our Judaeo-Christian beliefs which is still fundamental. It is a fundamental tenet running through our society even though we are a very multicultural society now. I think that has shown itself in the fact that we have not had capital punishment here for about 30 years. One of the reasons for that is that on occasions there was a real concern that an innocent person who had been wrongly convicted was hanged. That was one of the real concerns. I think some proof of that led to capital punishment being repealed in Great Britain. It also was a significant factor, I think, in terms of ceasing capital punishment here.

Just as our society baulks at the legislature taking the life of a criminal, I think our society also has very grave reservations in terms of doctors or somebody else taking a life through voluntary euthanasia. If things can go wrong with capital punishment, things also can go wrong, because of the human error factor, with legislation for voluntary euthanasia. A number of speakers have pointed out already a few problems in Mr Moore's Bill that do cause those loopholes which I think should give us great cause for concern.

A number of other factors are relevant, I think. Whilst the Northern Territory has enacted a Bill, the ACT tends to be sick of being used as a social experiment laboratory, and there is certainly still an element of that in this. I think that is something that our community has great concern about. I do have some significant concerns about Mr Moore's legislation. I accept that there could well be loopholes there. There could well be further problems with this Bill, despite Mr Moore's very honourable and decent intention to alleviate suffering, as he sees it. I think there could be a lot of unforeseen circumstances emanating from this Bill if it became law. There are those other moral factors, too, which I do not think we can underestimate in terms of this issue as well. Accordingly, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, as I indicated earlier, I will be voting against Mr Moore's Bill.

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