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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (5 November) . . Page.. 3655 ..

MR BERRY (continuing):

The next Bill which comes up in the trio is the Crimes (Assisted Suicide) Bill. I have to refer to the Scrutiny of Bills Committee's report in relation to this matter. The Scrutiny of Bills Committee's report specifically mentioned the Crimes (Assisted Suicide) Bill 1997. I will paraphrase some of the comments on the Bill, but the committee said this:

This Bill creates a number of new offences in relation to assisting a person to suicide, and provides that in any circumstances which would constitute one of the new offences, subsection 17(1) of the Crimes Act 1900 does not apply. The object is to provide penalties in relation to the new offences which are much lighter than the penalty under subsection 17(1).

The committee rightly points out that this creates two levels of application of penalties for this crime in relation to certain persons. Some people would be subjected to this penalty which is proposed in the Bill, but some others would not. For example, a doctor would be exposed to the new mitigated penalties but a nurse would not. The committee was critical of that proposal. I quote from the report:

Clause 5 defines the circumstances in which a medical practitioner who assists a `prescribed person' to commit suicide is punishable by imprisonment for 3 months if the latter administered a substance by her or himself, or by imprisonment for 6 months in any other case. But under subclause 6(1) a police officer `may serve' an offence notice on a medical practitioner, and by subclause 6(2) the Director of Public Prosecutions `may serve' an offence notice on a medical practitioner who has been charged with an offence under clause 5. The effect of such a notice is to enable the `alleged offender' to opt to pay a fine (as prescribed), and if this is done, no further proceedings shall be taken in respect of the offence and the person shall not be regarded as having been convicted of an offence against clause 5.

The report goes on to say that this raises important considerations, and that is very true because it points to the issue of public officers being able "to dispense with the operation of the law in favour of particular individuals". There are some distinct areas of concern which are raised by the Scrutiny of Bills Committee and I think they give cause for fairly grave concern in relation to the matter.

One further matter is that if, in accordance with the legislation proposed by Mr Moore, a doctor were to assist somebody with a suicide or euthanasia in some way, it would remain to be held to be a crime. If this same doctor were subjected to the on-the-spot fine proposal, there is nothing to stop the Medical Board from acting against the doctor in question for the commission of a criminal offence. It seems to me that that sort of vulnerability would render the Crimes (Assisted Suicide) Bill ineffective at any rate. It would also seem to me that there would be few doctors who would participate in this process, and that would render the Bill ineffective for the most part.

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