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Every Australian State, bar the Northern Territory, has introduced ‘voluntary assisted dying’ or VAD legislation. The NT is set to make it legal this August.[i] All this is occurring just as Canada is on course to reach 100,000 deaths by Medical Assistance in Dying (‘MAID’).[ii]

On 24 July, the second day of the Australia Labor Party’s National Conference, the delegates decided that the federal laws relating to voluntary assisted dying should change to allow terminally ill patients to use telehealth services.[iii]

Currently, Australia bans people from using telehealth for VAD consultations, with doctors facing fines of up to $300,000.[iv] The national Labor conference resolved that this should be removed.[v]

Compromising Safeguards

Yet even prominent members of the Australian Labor Party don’t feel comfortable supporting this change, up to and including the Prime Minister.[vi] Anthony Albanese said, “I’m a supporter of voluntary euthanasia… but it’s also important that protections be placed around it.” He holds the view that voluntary assisted dying consultations “… should be face to face” otherwise voluntary assisted dying would be undermined.[vii]

The Attorney-General of Australia, Michelle Rolland, said, “I am personally not convinced that a person confronting an end-of-life decision shouldn’t be afforded the dignity of a personal face-to-face consultation with a medical practitioner.”[viii] The use of “dignity” is extremely ironic in these circumstances. She goes on to say, “These provisions are there for a good reason: they were enacted to deter ill-intentioned individuals from encouraging vulnerable people to self-harm or commit suicide.”[ix]

Of course it’s incoherent; there is no additional dignity in being approved to be killed by the government through a Zoom call compared to being approved by the government in-person. It is all a defacement of human dignity.

Demanding Death

However, it is nonetheless important that this not be implemented nationally because it will lead to, as Ms Rowland alludes, people who are suicidal taking advantage of it, and it will simply lead to more voluntary assisted dying because it will increase the exalted accessibility of VAD.

Australia appears well on its way down the slippery slope that was warned about just years earlier before the introduction of VAD laws in Queensland on 1 January 2023. Truly a tragic milestone in Australia’s history, a milestone that will result in thousands of lives taken that could be afforded better medical options, such as counselling or greater palliative care.

In response, we urge all Queenslanders to take action immediately. If you live in a federal electorate represented by a Labor MP, please contact your local member as soon as possible. If you do not live in a Labor-held electorate, we encourage you to contact the Attorney-General, Michelle Rowland, or the Leader of the House, Tony Burke, by email and make your concerns known.

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Republished with thanks to Cherish Life.