Independent MLA Michael Moore has long had euthanasia on his agenda. It is one of several items … including drug-law reform and planning … where he has cut out a significant political role for himself in the ACT. One of his favourite tactics has been to put up Bills that would enact stated Labor policy positions that the parliamentary party has deliberately allowed to remain dormant for fear of electoral consequences. It has caused great embarrassment among Labor and a certain amount of publicity and, indeed, voter support for himself. It is good politics. And in Mr Moore’s case where he has a genuine belief that the proposals will improve society it has been honest politics. Until now. His latest proposal on euthanasia, however, lacks straight-forward intention and lacks the integrity of his previous attempts (one successful and one unsuccessful) to change the law for the terminally ill.
His 1994 Bill (taken over and put in a slightly different form by then Labor Attorney-General Terry Connolly) gave a patient under the care of a doctor the right to maximum pain relief “”to the extent that is reasonable under the circumstances”. It is not an entirely certain law, but it gives an out to doctors who administer such quantities of drugs that it kills the patient, provided the intention of the doctor is pain relief even if there is a high risk of death.
His 1995 Bill, which failed, would have allowed active euthanasia.
His new Bill changes the 1994 Bill so that the judgment about how much pain relief is given rests with the patient. Patients would have the right to receive as much pain relief as the patient deems necessary.
This is backdoor euthanasia and lacks the protections and safeguards provided in the more honest active euthanasia Bill.
There are other difficulties. It allows for patients to demand as much pain killer as is needed to kill them and presumably allows for doctors to give it to them without fear of prosecution, even if it were obvious that amount of pain killer would kill the patient. Thus it provides active euthanasia on patient demand, but by one method only … through the administration of pain killers, presumably morphine. There are undoubtedly more humane methods of dying. This reveals the lack of integrity in the Bill. If it is about humane dying, then it should aim for the most humane methods. Mr Moore has argued that the resistance to his Bill posed by right-to-life groups is about control, not about the protection of life. But his latest Bill seems to be about getting some form of active euthanasia on the statute book, not about dignified death.
Patients are not in a position to know about death by pain-killer. Moreover, there is some evidence that morphine no longer prevents pain after certain doses. After that it can only be a form of crude killer.
If we are to have euthanasia in the ACT, MLAs should vote on an honest proposal that enables informed patients and doctors to use swift and certain drugs. For now they have rejected this. We should therefore wait to see how the 1994 Act works in practice and look at the Northern Territory experience before revisiting the same proposal.
The latest unsatisfactory compromise seems to be pitched at securing the numbers in the Assembly now that its composition has changed slightly and it might fit the sentiments of some who voted the other way last time. But this proposal of “”give me enough morphine to kill me” denies the dignified death euthanasia proponents seek and offends those who oppose euthanasia anyway. It should be rejected.