The euthanasia Bill proposed by Michael Moore stands to be defeated following moves in the ACT Labor Party to change Labor policy, which presently supports some forms of euthanasia.
Labor’s policy is almost certain to be reviewed and amended before Mr Moore’s Bill is presented to the Legislative Assembly later this year.
Prominent Labor Party member Peter Conway is to move a review of the policy at the Curtin branch on Monday week.
Mr Conway said yesterday that the law was not keeping up with medical technology.
At present, Labor policy says an ACT Labor Government would introduce legislation to allow for “”internventional medical treatment to be refused by a patient”.
Mr Moore’s preferred option would go further. It would allow active medical steps to end life where the patient, in writing and with witnesses, requested it.
Mr Conway was opposed to Mr Moore’s Bill. He said the issue centred around “”what is normal prolongation of life”. The issued needed to be more clearly defined. If a new law was to be about protecting doctors who ended life with, for example, high doses of morphine ostensibly to end pain but really to cause death, “”then let’s say so.”
“”With an increasingly aging population we have to say what is “prolonging life beyond normal means’#” he said. “”That needs clarifying.”
The present policy was out of date and he was sure it would be reviewed.
Other Labor Party sources said it was a matter of great contention within the party. They said the Chief Minister, Rosemary Follett, did not want it on the agenda. The party would happily forget it.
If it came to a vote in the House it is likely that at least two of the eight Labor MPs would vote against Mr Moore’s Bill, no matter what the policy. Liberal policy is to have a conscience vote, but one, perhaps more, Liberal MPs would vote for it. The shadow Attorney-General, Gary Humphries, is against Mr Moore’s Bill. He has argued that the ACT has had too many social change through legislation in the past year and a lot more debate is needed.
The large Catholic element in the Labor Party has considerable reservations about Mr Moore’s Bill. To date they have not been especially troubled by the official policy because it has been inactive and fairly ambiguous. Mr Moore’s Bill has caused widespread concern that, in the absence of a conscience vote, Labor MPs might be bound to vote according to policy, and it could become law.
Conscience votes in the Labor Party are few and far between. So, in all, without a change in Labor policy, the Bill (or an amended form of it) might muster a majority, making the ACT one of the few places in the world where voluntary euthanasia is legal.
This has spurred opponents into action. Another Labor source said not only the Catholic right is opposed to it. Present common law gives patients a right to refuse treatment, and some in the Labor Party, such as the Attorney-General, Terry Connolly, were happy to leave it at that and would like to forget about it.
However, Mr Moore, with typical political flair has picked another Labor policy and set the draftsman to work to produce a Bill to enact it, much to Labor’s embarrassment.
Labor sources say the party has been happy to let Mr Moore have the take the initiative that it was not prepared to take on the legalisation of brothels and the decriminalisation of marijuana, but euthanasia is different. It has given rise to considerable tension and active opposition.
They say that Mr Conway certainly has the numbers at Curtin and if he thought he could get a change of policy through ACT branch conference later this year, then he must have support of at least half the left, and Mr Moore’s Bill would fail.