The passing of the Andrews Bill to overturn the Northern Territory’s euthanasia law brought out most of the worst in elements in Australian politics and only a little of the best.
This is about the conduct of MPs, irrespective of the merits of the case for or against euthanasia (about which too much has been said already).
Most of the worst elements are linked. They start with the refusal of MPs to represent. Virtually every opinion poll on euthanasia has shown between 70 per cent and 80 per cent in favour of euthanasia. Sure, every opinion poll ever conducted is open to attack for loaded questions, sampling size etc etc. But the euthanasia pattern has been too consistent to be credibly attacked.
In short, the MPs who voted ignored the overwhelming opinion of their electorates. They said we know better than you; we know what’s good for you.
Now, that may not be such a bad thing. Often MPs are better informed and an a better position to make decisions about complex matters than the vast mass of less-educated, apathetic, less-intelligent Australians. MPs are forced to look at these issues because it is their job; the rest of us a too busy cutting lunches; shopping; cleaning; going to work as plumbers and nuclear physicists.
Opinion polls suggest capital punishment might get majority approval (though there have not been many on the topic). Certainly there have been times when mass opinion was in favour but MPs resisted the urge to pander to them.
None the less, in the euthanasia debate MPs implicitly accepted that MP’s view was more important than the electorate’s and that the MP has a right to impose that view on an unwilling electorate.
To some extent this is the nature of representative democracy. The mass has neither time nor inclination to get across things like the fringe-benefits tax; planning regulations; fishing rights and so on. Thus we delegate the task to our elected representatives.
In doing so, though, we expect them to decide in good faith, in a way that they might think we would like if we had had the chance to get fully informed about the issue.
In the case of euthanasia, however, they made no attempt whatever. And there were stronger grounds for reflecting public opinion rather than going their own way on this issue than most others because it is an issue that people have thought about because it profoundly affects all of us in a way that fishing rights and fringe-benefits taxes do not.
Instead they did their own thing.
Some may have done it because they felt their own consciences superior to those of their electorate; or their information superior. Other MPs might have taken strong account of the written and oral submissions made directly to them or to the parliamentary committee that inquired into the Bill which was overwhelmingly against euthanasia.
The combination of these things is very worrying for representative democracy. MPs are listening to themselves or the noisy minority lobbyists in preference to their electors.
If they have demonstrably done this in the case of euthanasia where opinion polling is extensive and there is keen public following of the events, what are they doing on the thousands of lesser issues that come up? Gut feeling, lobbyists and fear of losing the votes of single-issue electors who determine how they will vote according to an MP’s vote on that one issue will drive an MPs’ actions in preference the overall opinion of the electorate.
And it is worse in party votes where those things drive a party’s position which every party MP must follow.
And then there is the hypocrisy. With MPs deciding that their consciences and knowledge are better than those of the masses, could MPs please cut the hypocrisy and humbug in pretending to be “”in touch with the Australian community” and to represent “”mainstream” Australia or the “”battlers”. Is there any greater battler than someone terminally ill?
Can the Coalition side, whose members mostly voted against euthanasia, cut the further humbug and hypocrisy of saying they stand for individual rights; for freedom of choice; for government not interfering in people’s affairs; for the doctor-patient relationship and for the rights of the states (and almost states) against rule from Canberra?
Then there is the grandstanding. The federal parliament has now spent more time on the debate on this Bill than any other Bill bar native title and industrial relations in the past half decade. It is utterly out of proportion. Moreover, it shows how ignorant and out of touch our MPs are. Do they seriously imagine their grandstanding will make the slightest difference to what happens in the sick bed. As many polls of doctors show, doctors around Australia _ as they always have _ will quietly respond to the wishes of patients and their families who want to end their suffering in what is usually only a few days early. And no-one will know the difference or give evidence to prove it.
But they nearly all had to grandstand. On this rare occasion when MPs were not bound by party dictat, they distinguished themselves with hypocrisy and arrogance.