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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (5 November) . . Page.. 3658 ..

MR OSBORNE (4.19): I rise today to mark the demise of the latest attempts by my dogged colleague Michael Moore to sneak euthanasia under the bar once again. I think I have made my position quite clear over the years, so I will not bore you with it again. Let me say only this: The only thing I am happy to put to death in the ACT is the majority of this series of Bills. Today we are taking the brain-dead body of euthanasia off life support, giving it a lethal dose, burying it, and then dancing on its grave. Good try, Michael. With the election coming up, I do not know whether either of us will be back to debate this issue again; but if we do both return I expect that soon after the next Assembly is formed you will be getting out your shovel, digging up the corpse of euthanasia and trying to breathe new life into it. Let me say this one thing: I will be standing there with a stake in my hand.

MRS CARNELL (Chief Minister) (4.21): I will be opposing the first two Bills, and I think I have made my points fairly clear on that. With regard to the Euthanasia Referendum Bill, even if we passed a referendum in the ACT we could not do anything with it at that stage, so to spend a quite significant amount of money on a referendum that we knew we could not implement would seem to me to be a huge waste of taxpayers' money. Of course, if Mr Moore and others were willing to support our CIR Bill, the citizens could put forward a referendum and a referendum could happen. On the basis that that is not the case, I do not believe it is appropriate to spend taxpayers' money for no purpose.

The Medical Treatment (Amendment) Bill 1996 is totally different because it does two things. One of them is that it removes the words "to the maximum extent that is reasonable under the circumstances" from the Act and leaves in place the words "to ensure the right of patients to receive relief from pain and suffering". I was particularly amazed that Mr Berry opposes that. We will move from a situation where the Act says "to ensure the right of patients to receive relief from pain and suffering to the maximum extent that is reasonable in the circumstances" to a situation where it will read "to ensure the right of patients to receive relief from pain and suffering".

I fully accept that that does change the debate somewhat because as the section stands at the moment the debate will always be about what is reasonable, and I think all of us would believe that what the argument should be about is the rights of the patient. This is not about euthanasia. If the intent under this Bill were to terminate somebody's life it would not fall inside the Bill. The intent has to be to remove pain and suffering, or to help the patient, or to keep the patient comfortable. So it is a totally different scenario. On one side there is the debate on whether euthanasia is all right or not. At this stage I am not willing to support a euthanasia Bill, active euthanasia meaning where a doctor and a patient determine to end a terminal patient's life. On the other side of the agenda we have a situation where the total reason or the total motivation is to keep a patient comfortable.

I have to say, from spending many years dealing with patients who are in pain or at the end of their lives, that I believe it is the right of a patient to receive relief from pain and suffering. I know that there are times in medical science when that is not possible, but I believe a patient has the right to that sort of treatment wherever it is possible.

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