The Northern Territory’s new law on active euthanasia has caused a flurry of reaction across Australia. A lot of the philosophical debate on both sides has been widely canvassed. It has been particularly canvassed in the ACT over the past year or so in the lead up to the ACT Legislative Assembly debating the issue and passing a half-way law. The compromise was reached after Independent MLA Michael Moore introduced a Bill along similar lines to the Northern Territory.
The ACT law allows a more active role on the part of doctors than the law in other states, but it is less active than the new Northern Territory law. The difference is critical. After satisfying a range of safeguards, the Northern Territory law permits a doctor to administer a drug to kill a patient, knowing that the drug will kill the patient and with the sole intention of killing the patient. Other states permit doctors to assent to a request from a patient to withdraw treatment. The ACT’s position is mid-way. ACT law permits a doctor, at the patient’s request, to administer higher and higher doses of drugs (presumably morphine) to alleviate pain irrespective of whether the drug might kill the patient or otherwise hasten death.
Mr Moore has used the passing of the new law in the Northern Territory as a reason to revisit the issue in the ACT. It is a premature suggestion. The ACT’s elected representatives have made their decision after an exhaustive committee process. They changed the law accordingly. Both the Chief Minister, Kate Carnell, and the Leader of the Opposition, Rosemary Follett, have said the new ACT law should be given time to work before the matter is revisited. That argument is unassailable. If Mr Moore does present a new Bill, MLAs would have every reason to peremptorily postpone it for at least a year at which time a report might be called for on how the present law is working. The fact the ACT has already, after great consideration, changed the law, puts it in a different category from other states which have not looked at the issue recently. They may take the new Northern Territory position as a catalyst for looking at change.
The ACT should not. Indeed, the ACT is in a better position in that having made a reform which must allay at least some of the more immediate concerns of patients and their relatives and the medical profession. Further, the state of the law probably does not accurately reflect what happens at the sick bed. Earlier this year in Victoria several doctors announced they had acted to help terminally ill patients die and challenged authorities to prosecute. They did not. Many anonymous surveys of doctors suggest the practise is widespread irrespective of the law. That suggests practice may forge ahead of the law; in those circumstances it would be wise to see what the practice becomes under the ACT’s new law before assessing the need for further reform.