‘This is the most cautious, the safest, scheme for assisted dying anywhere in the world,’ Daniel Andrews says

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Victoria’s assisted dying legislation includes new and severe penalties for doctors caught abusing the scheme, including up to a life sentence for encouraging a patient to choose to die.



On Wednesday the premier, Daniel Andrews; the health minister, Jill Hennessy; and the attorney general, Martin Pakula, were due to introduce to parliament the bill to legalise voluntary assisted dying. The bill was two years in the making and included extensive consultation with disability workers, palliative care specialists and legal experts.

Andrews, Pakula and Hennessy all emphasised to reporters outside Parliament House that the legislation was the most conservative of all the assisted dying laws around the world. It includes 66 safeguards to prevent abuse of the laws.

Assisted dying laws to be debated in New South Wales and Victoria Read more

“This will be – because we’ve listened to the experts – the most conservative model in the world, with many safeguards, to give people the choice they’ve been denied far too long,” Andrews said.

“We think we can get this balance right, and give to people a choice for them to be empowered, for them to have control over the last stage of their life. This is the most cautious, the safest, scheme for assisted dying anywhere in the world.”

Pakula said although existing laws included penalties that would apply to a person or a doctor who inappropriately assisted someone to die, new penalties would be introduced so that prosecutors would not have to “retrofit new types of behaviour to old offences”.

Under the Victorian legislation patients will have to administer lethal medication themselves except in exceptional circumstances. Anyone who abused their permit and assisted someone to die or encouraged them to die would face life imprisonment and significant fines, Pakula said.

“This is a regime fundamentally about administration, and assisted administration is allowed in very limited circumstances.”

A parliamentary debate on the bill will be held in October.

As Victoria introduced the bill the head of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Michael Gannon, wrote an opinion piece for the Huffington Post referencing an AMA member survey which found those doctors mostly likely to support voluntary dying were “younger doctors and those who rarely treat dying patients”. About one-sixth of doctors are AMA members.

“Exactly how and when euthanasia became a progressive left issue is difficult to understand,” Gannon wrote.

“A societal change that threatens the most vulnerable people, those without a voice, while prioritising the rights of the individual, might appear to be ideologically closer to the right.

“The way we look after our elderly is simply not good enough. It is a stain on our society that we do not invest in aged care like we invest in, and celebrate, technological advances in medical procedures and new pharmaceuticals.”

Church and states braced for biggest battle on euthanasia Read more

NSW will introduce its own legislation to parliament on Thursday.

The Victorian and NSW proposals are similar in that both would allow a patient to be prescribed drugs to take their own life if they are terminally ill and expected to die within 12 months.

Victoria adds that the illness must be “causing suffering that cannot be relieved in a manner that is tolerable to the person” while the NSW scheme says a person must be “experiencing severe pain, suffering or physical incapacity to an extent unacceptable to the patient”. In NSW, a person would have to be at least 25 years old, while in Victoria the cut-off is 18.

The key difference is that the NSW law is a private member’s bill, where Victoria’s is government legislation, which gives it extra standing and a guaranteed debate in parliament.

Go Gentle Australia’s campaign director, Paul Price, said the group, which advocates for assisted dying laws, was focusing its resources on Victoria because “the process has been much stronger than anywhere”.

“The risk in NSW is that it follows the paths of so many private member’s bills that have failed in history, more than 30 have failed, [while] this is a government bill.”

He said the Victorian bill was “spot on” in terms of its clarity and safeguards.