Greens leader Bob Brown has a battle on his hands to have Federal Parliament reverse its ban on the territories' ability to legalise euthanasia.
BY COINCIDENCE, within days of a jury finding a Sydney woman guilty of manslaughter for assisting her partner's suicide, the Federal Parliament came a step closer to another full-on debate about euthanasia.
The case of Graeme Wylie is the nightmare scenario for the euthanasia lobby, because it raises all the fears that many people have. Wylie suffered from Alzheimer's disease - the jury found he was not in a fit condition to make an informed decision. He had also recently changed his will to give substantially more benefit to his partner Shirley Justins, who handed him the fatal drink of Nembutal.
Consent and financial interests are just two of the many issues in the difficult debate about the pros and cons of changing the law to allow euthanasia. The case doesn't deter Greens leader Bob Brown, who is battling to have Federal Parliament reverse its 1997 ban on the territories' ability to legalise euthanasia. This followed the Northern Territory making it legal. Brown points out that under the NT legislation a person had to be of sound mind to give consent.
Even Philip Nitschke, high-profile pro-euthanasia campaigner, had expressed reservations when Wylie earlier applied to the international group Dignitas for an assisted suicide. Brown's private member's bill is confined to the territories, the only areas where the Federal Government has jurisdiction on this matter, which is elsewhere under state law Normally a private member's bill would be likely to sink into oblivion. But Brown, as leader of the Greens, is now well placed to push for it to be debated and brought to a vote in both houses.
From Tuesday, he and his colleagues share the balance of power in the new Senate. This gives him leverage in persuading Kevin Rudd to provide parliamentary time for the bill. So far, the Government hasn't been definite on whether it will do this. But it has said the bill will be treated like previous legislation of its kind, which suggests it probably will, because the Howard government facilitated Kevin Andrews' private member's bill that overturned the NT law A divisive moral issue before Parliament is probably the last thing Rudd wants in a busy schedule, but he has to weigh the importance of Brown. This would be a very pale shadow of the concessions the former government gave independent senator Brian Harradine for his moral causes. Rudd, who is personally antieuthanasia, is certainly committed to a conscience vote for his MPs if the bill comes to a vote, as is Nelson (a medical doctor) who is also personally a "no" on euthanasia.
On Thursday a Senate committee delivered its report on the Brown bill, predictably splitting all over the place. One thing the senators did agree on is that the bill should not go ahead in its original form, which would reinstate the NT legislation. Brown immediately said he would drop that provision, so the bill would simply leave the slate clean for the territories to legislate or not, as they wished. Three Labor senators - Trish Crossin, Linda Kirk and Gavin Marshall - supported the Brown bill proceeding with amendments; a fourth, John Hogg, about to become Senate president, opposed any change to the status quo, as did Liberal senators Guy Barnett, Mary Jo Fisher and Russell Trood.
The Democrats' Andrew Bartlett didn't think the bill should go ahead and argued there should be a national approach with any legal changes applying throughout the country. If the debate proceeds, there will be cross-party alliances and massive campaigning from the pro and especially the anti forces. In the 1996-97 debate Tony Burke, now Agriculture minister but not then in Federal Parliament, was a key figure in the campaign for the Andrews bill, which also saw a conscience vote.
That bill was passed 88-35 in the House of Representatives and 38-33 in the Senate. Although the issue crosses party lines there are more social conservatives in the Coalition, which had a big majority in the House, swelling the anti-euthanasia numbers. What the numbers would be now can only be speculation. Brown says he has high confidence that he can get his bill through and believes that deleting the section reactivating the NT legislation will be helpful, swinging debate more onto the rights of the territories.
But, even in different times and despite Brown's confidence, the hurdles for this bill would be great - greater than, for example, the successful moves on the abortion drug RU486 and on stem cells. Some people who support these would find euthanasia unacceptable. If it did manage to get through, the campaign would turn to the territories, in particular the Northern Territory. Nitschke, who was at the centre of the mid-'90s battles in Darwin and Canberra, told The Sun-Herald it is hard to estimate the chance of a repeat bill being passed in the NT now `The trouble is the government has changed several times since the [Marshall] Perron bunch" who sponsored the original legislation. But he claims that in the NT "sentiment is still strong; the issue is a popular one". Brown thinks that if his bill got through it would be unlikely that the NT would legislate at the moment for euthanasia.
"They don t have a Marshall Perron in the Assembly." But he says the cause could be taken up in the ACT. He also points to legislation before the Victorian Parliament as showing the interest in the issue. "It's inevitable that Australia will have death with dignity laws," Brown predicts. "The question is how long [until it does]' If the Federal Parliament lifted the restriction on the territories, the chances would be high that, even if not immediately, a territory government would eventually pass such a law, a point that will not be lost on MPs if there is a vote on the Brown bill.
Source: Sun Herald