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Australia’s first, safest, and most conservative voluntary assisted dying scheme is booming. In Victoria, demand has skyrocketed, and the Labor government plans to loosen safeguards and make it easier for even more people to access services.

Figures from the annual report of the Voluntary Assisted Dying Review Board show that 389 people died in the 2024-25 year. The total of deaths in Victoria since VAD was launched in 2019 is 1,683.

The annual report, released in September, says that there are almost no problems with VAD in Victoria – except that not enough people are dying.

“Barriers to timely access and concerns around program sustainability remain,” says the report.

“Addressing these matters is essential to realising compassionate end-of-life care for more Victorians.”

This is a far cry from assurances that former Premier Dan Andrews gave the state in 2017, when the Voluntary Assisted Dying Act passed. “We anticipate in the first 12 months, based on overseas experience, around a dozen people that will access voluntary assisted dying,” he predicted at a press conference.

“And we would think that number will settle at around a 100, a 150 per year in the years after.”

Time for a reality check.

In the first 12 months of the legislation, from 19 June 2019 to 30 June 2020, 124 people died. That’s about a dozen per month, not a dozen per year. So much for 100 to 150 deaths per year.

More Deaths Required

The review board is fretting about its capacity for meeting rising demand for the services of VAD doctors.

“In 2024–25, the Board received an unprecedented 837 requests for voluntary assisted dying (VAD),” it says.

“As community awareness continues to grow, the Board anticipates this will rise significantly. Projections indicate there may be around 1,300 requests each year by 2028. This growth means Victoria will need to adjust the way it supports the system through which VAD requests proceed.”

“Adjusting” means loosening the safeguards which Premier Andrews once boasted were the best in the world.

Since the Victorian law was passed in 2017, every other state and the ACT has passed its own VAD legislation, each a bit more liberal than the last. Victoria is being left behind – and it’s downright humiliating.

“The uptake of VAD in Victoria is significantly lower than in most other states,” complains the review board.

Reducing Rights

With this in mind, it has recommended 13 amendments to the 2017 legislation. They include the following measures:

• Doctors should be free to persuade patients of the benefits of VAD so that they can make “a fully informed decision” about their end-of-life choices. (The review board seems to have forgotten that Premier Andrews said: “There can be no coercion, doctors can’t suggest this – patients have to ask for it.”)

• Nursing homes should be stripped of the right to refuse to host VAD.

• Conscientious objection should be discouraged because it is not compassionate and disrespects patient autonomy. “Obstruction, inaction or discouragement by medical practitioners in response to a person’s request for more information about VAD is inconsistent with patient-centred treatment,” it states.

• The time in which the patient is expected to die should be extended from six months to 12 months. Doctors should be able to approve VAD requests over a Zoom call.

In 2017, Premier Andrew boasted that: “This legislation will deliver the safest model in the world, with the most stringent checks and balances.”

Safeguards? Andrews proudly declared in 2017 that 68 of them guaranteed the safety of vulnerable Victorians. One by one, they are being stripped away. How many will be left after Victoria revises its “historic” legislation? How many Victorians will die?

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Republished with thanks to The Catholic Weekly. Image courtesy of Adobe.