Recently the NSW Government Upper House debated a private members bill about allowing the provision of euthanasia to be performed in NSW. The bill was introduced by Nationals Member Trevor Khan MLC, after a parliamentary inquiry into palliative care uncovered the need for the provision of euthanasia in NSW as well as some flaws in the palliative care system.
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As a strong supporter of euthanasia, I always wonder why this is not already in place Australia-wide. Many of the opponents I’ve spoken to used the fact that there was an apparent lack of protections in the bill to justify them being against it. The bill outlined that the person must be over 25 years of age, be assessed by two different independent specialists and a psychiatrist, as well as be listed as someone with a terminal condition with less than 12 months to live. I struggle to understand how there was not already enough protections in the bill.
As Bronnie Taylor MLC, a former oncology nurse, said in her speech: “The whole notion that excellent palliative care can cure everyone’s suffering is not true. Anyone who has worked with people who are dying knows emphatically that that is just not true.”
The fact is that we care so much about the way that we live, that we seem to forget about how we are going to die. We make sure that we live life to the fullest, then when we get to the stage of dying, we don’t know how to cope. The process of euthanasia allows us to have these conversations, to have some control over how we die, and decide how we say goodbye to the world. We plan our funerals, we plan our lives but we don’t seem to care about how we die.
This is a conversation that needs to be had. It won’t go away until it is resolved.
