The legislation will exacerbate the concern of the elderly and the terminally ill about control over their lives with the possibility of a miserable lingering death constantly on their minds. It is only through knowing what lies ahead and what the options are that they can get on with living in the here and now. Since the overturning of the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act of the Northern Territory in 1997 by the private member's bill introduced by Workplace Relations Minister Kevin Andrews, Australia has gone backwards in this area.

Ten years ago Australia led the world with progressive but careful and well-considered legislation on voluntary euthanasia, but it would seem that today we lead the world in something quite different. In the Northern Territory in 1995, I was chief minister. Then and now, people assumed that I must have been witness to the particularly bad death of a loved one to make me devise and put to the Parliament a bill of such ground-breaking dimensions. At this time the Netherlands did not prosecute doctors who practised voluntary euthanasia, but nowhere in the world had it been legalised.

But my interest in and commitment to voluntary euthanasia comes from something much more basic. I believe it is the fundamental right of every competent adult to have control over when and how they die. Terminal illness comes in many forms and rarely is it pleasant. A decision that death is preferable to the life one lives, or faces, is one only the individual can make. If you have no overbearing religious belief that tells you that suicide is sinful, it is up to your own conscience whether you make this most important of decisions.

However, there is more to my support for people's right to choose than the pain and suffering that comes with serious illness. My experience with Dr Philip Nitschke in the Northern Territory during the time of the territory's legislation, and since, has strengthened my understanding of the upside of choice. Once the elderly and the sick have options, I see them stop worrying. They stop being engulfed by an anxiety of an awful, undignified death that might, given age and illness, be round the next corner. As one 90-year-old told me: " I do not fear death, I fear the way death will come." It was no surprise to me that of the 1100 elderly people surveyed recently by Exit International, more than 80 per cent reported feeling less worried about the future once their end-of-life choices had been explained.

This is why this new federal legislation is so dastardly. Information is about providing choice. Information is not about encouraging rational people to commit suicide any more than family planning information is an incitement to teenagers to have sex outside marriage. In both cases, the intention of the targeted provision of information is to allow people to make fully informed, rational decisions about important life and death issues. Ignorance is not bliss and people are not stupid, a point that the politicians who voted for this new law seem to have missed.

Ministerial comment since the bill was introduced suggests that this is a well-intended attempt to protect Australian teenagers from the suicide chat rooms of the online world. Of course, this objective is noble. As a country that values our future, vulnerable teens should be protected from themselves at all costs. But given that almost all teenage suicide websites are hosted outside Australia, the efficacy of abolishing a genre of internet use that was never widespread in this country must be questioned. As a former politician, I know the trade-offs and compromises that it takes to translate a good idea into law. I am also aware of the dangers of bad laws and the damage that can be done through unintended consequences.

The Suicide Related Material Offences Act is modern book burning, yet history tells us that book burning is the act of the ignorant. The most common method of suicide used by people over 70 is hanging. The proportion of these people who take their own lives due to illness and old age is unknown. What is clear, however, is that with access to information and assistance as we saw in Darwin a decade ago, this rate would almost certainly fall. Who then would not be better off?