Philip Nitschke: how the face of the voluntary euthanasia campaign became its outcast

Philip Nitschke: how the face of the voluntary euthanasia campaign became its outcast

Exactly 20 years ago a 66-year-old carpenter had a ham sandwich with his wife and a visiting doctor, watched a footy game and then died precisely when he had planned to, at 2pm.



Bob Dent, who was suffering from prostate cancer, was the first person in the world to take his own life under a legal voluntary euthanasia scheme and the doctor in question – Philip Nitschke – facilitated it with his own custom-built machine.

The Northern Territory’s Rights of the Terminally Ill Act, introduced by the then chief minister, Marshall Perron, allowed for someone in their last months of life to apply for a medically assisted death.

Nitschke says he had no involvement in the cause until Perron announced the bill but he corralled 20 local doctors to take a full-page ad out in the NT News to support it and, once it was law, a number of people, including Dent, came to him and his patient-operated euthanasia device.

“About a week beforehand I was at their place in Tiwi and Bob said ‘I’ve picked a day’. [His wife] Judy said come round and have lunch and Bob said ‘I’ll die at two o’clock’,” Nitschke tells Guardian Australia.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Philip Nitschke in June 1996 with his euthanasia delivery system, which comprised a laptop computer and a box containing a syringe, which was connected to the patient by an intravenous line and driven by compressed air. Photograph: AP

“You don’t know what to talk about at that lunch. Everything you’re about to say, you think about it before you say it and then you think oh I better not say that, because that’s related to something more than an hour into the future and that seems inappropriate.

“We watched the football on television because that was sort of immediate and then, at 2pm, Bob sat up and, really stately and composed, said ‘Let’s do it’.”

Judy was there by Bob’s side in their Darwin home as he died. That he was able to go on his own terms remains of huge comfort to her.

“Naturally I didn’t want him to die but I didn’t want him to live the way he was having to live,” she tells Guardian Australia.

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“When he got his paperwork signed, the palliative effect was greater than everything everybody else had been trying to do for him. The mental anguish was gone and he could put up with more of the physical problems … because he knew he could call Philip at any time and say ‘Let’s go’.”

Judy says her husband felt he was in the right place at the right time for his death: in Darwin for the nine months the law was valid before the federal government overturned it. At the same time Canberra also amended legislation to prevent the territories reintroducing it, “turning Territorians into second-class citizens”, says Judy bitterly.

The federal intervention on the democratically elected territory government was “incomprehensible”, Perron told the ABC last year, describing it as a “complete cross-party religious movement” led by the Coalition MP Kevin Andrews and the Labor MP Tony Burke.

“I’m disappointed we’re still here 20 years after my husband used the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act with no such legislation anywhere in Australia,” Judy says.

Bob Dent was the first of four terminally ill people to undertake voluntary euthanasia before the federal government stepped in. All four were assisted by Nitschke.

Two decades on and Nitschke’s standing as an advocate for voluntary euthanasia is more divisive than anyone at the time could have imagined.

Dent was not the first to try the law. Taxi driver Max Bell was forced to return to Broken Hill in New South Wales after medical and psychiatric professionals in the NT refused to provide the required assistance for his application for euthanasia in Darwin.

At 2pm, Bob sat up and, really stately and composed, said ‘Let’s do it’ Philip Nitschke

The incident, and subsequent media coverage of Bell’s eventual death from stomach cancer, sparked greater cooperation from the profession in the case of Dent and the others but it also appeared to have created a grudge within Nitschke that he still holds today.

“Finally we had this world-first law and then to have it frustrated in the case of Max Bell largely because the medical professional was holding it ransom,” Nitschke says. “They didn’t have to cooperate, they needed one doctor to say he was terminally ill and a psychiatrist to say he was of sound mind. They didn’t have to endorse the concept.”

In recent years the medical, psychiatric and even the pro-voluntary euthanasia communities have distanced themselves from Nitschke’s brand of increasingly extreme advocacy for a person’s right to die.

The Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency sought to deregister Nitschke over his involvement with the death of Nigel Brayley, a depressed but otherwise healthy man who took his own life in 2014.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest The former Northern Territory chief minister Marshal Perron, who introduced the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act, which allowed for someone in their last months of life to apply for a medically assisted death. Photograph: Alan Porritt/AAP

Last year Nitschke ceremoniously burned his medical licence after he was told he could begin practising medicine again but only if he gave up his position as director of Exit International and never spoke of euthanasia.



Prof Ian Hickie accused Nitschke of lacking empathy and said his ideas were “unacceptable”.

His views have been labelled “aberrant” by supporters of voluntary euthanasia and the Your Last Right coalition specifically opposes a number of Nitschke’s platforms, instead calling for strict oversight and medical involvement.

Shayne Higson, a spokeswoman for Andrew Denton’s Go Gentle Australia organisation, says Nitschke advocated for a law with strict safeguards for many years but his current views “could not be further away from the moderate, responsible laws that are currently being developed in state parliaments”.

“There are, in fact, many doctors working in the mainstream of medicine who support voluntary euthanasia and want to see it practised in a safe, medical setting with strong safeguards,” she says. “Those doctors’ voices are only getting louder.”

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In December Nitschke told Guardian Australia the elderly should be given Nembutal to use at a time of their choosing but also said he believed in the right for adults – of any age – to take their own lives in an act of “rational suicide”.

“I’m not suggesting we give out Nembutal to 20-year-olds,” he said. “But my philosophical position is that if we expect 20-year-olds to go over to Iraq and kill people, and we do … we can’t simply say ‘but you don’t have the right to kill yourself’. That makes no logical sense to me.

“So, if a rational person of any age decides now is the time to die for whatever reason they see as compelling, I think as a society – even though we may not like it and we might not want to encourage it – we should respect it. And that’s not what happens at present.”

Nitschke initially avoids answering questions about whether he believes there should be psychiatric evaluation of any sort in a future scheme but eventually says no.

“Practical reality tells me the only laws we’re going to get through parliaments of Australia will require some form of psychiatric assessment. I don’t think it’s necessary,” he says.

Nitschke says he is “annoyed” by the argument that suicidal ideation is always a symptom of psychiatric illness.

“I’m aware of the fact that some people who suicide are doing this as a result of some form of psychiatric malady,” he says.

“One of the issues which keep coming up though … is this whole concept of rational suicide in the sense that many people in the medical profession argue that anyone thinking of ending their life by definition can’t be rational.”

'Philip has always pushed the boundaries ... I can’t say I can agree with him but I’m not surprised at what he’s doing' Judy Dent

He emphasises his concerns for the elderly and says he advocates for people to be given information and a choice, noting the shocking statistics for suicide among people aged over 80.

Nitschke will on Thursday hold Australia’s first conference on rational suicide in Melbourne and has been given strict rules by the Victorian state library in return for hosting it. He concedes people believe his views will hinder the chance of voluntary euthanasia legislation getting up but he disagrees with them.

Judy Dent remains a vocal advocate for voluntary euthanasia and supports Nitschke – she will introduce him at the Melbourne conference – but she is among those who believe his aims damage the cause.

“I think Philip has always pushed the boundaries,” she says. “I’m not surprised. I can’t say I can agree with him but I’m not surprised at what he’s doing.

“Until we can get some decent legislation to start with, I don’t want to put the people who make those decisions offside, which Philip’s ideas will definitely do, I’m sure. Then again, I’m sure most of the people who make these laws are saying, ‘Oh ignore Philip anyway’.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Dr Philip Nitschke in his office in Coolalinga, Northern Territory, in 1997. Photograph: Rohan Sullivan/Associated Press

There are currently moves towards legislation in South Australia and Tasmania, and Victoria has launched an inquiry into state legislation on end-of-life choices.

Two federal bills around restoring territory rights lapsed with the double-dissolution election.

Bob Dent was still alive when conservative MP Kevin Andrews started “stirring the pot” against the NT law and Judy says her husband was “appalled”.

She remains furious at the minister and his parliamentary colleagues and says it’s “everybody but the public” holding back progress.

“Each new poll increases the number who approve of doctor assisted dying … but there are certain politicians who are afraid of losing their seat,” she says.

If Dent was still around what would he have to say? Judy laughs. “Get on with it.”

• In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. Hotlines in other countries can be found here