A year ago, spurred in part by having seen my father die badly, I set out to answer a question: what’s stopping a law for assisted dying in Australia?

Eventually I began to realise that the answer largely boils down to one sinister scenario, presented time and time again by opponents.

Here’s Anthony Fisher, the Catholic archbishop of Sydney, arguing against euthanasia in Sydney last year: “How quickly societies that go down that path start making the judgment that [some] lives are too burdensome … Putting granny out of her misery so easily becomes putting granny out of our misery.”

In other words: once it’s legal to help people die, what’s to stop people from getting rid of granny because she’s become a burden?

It’s hard to believe this argument has been persuading our politicians to sit on their hands for 20 years. Because once you know how these laws actually work in the Netherlands and Belgium, you realise how implausible it is.

First, the very basis of these laws is that they’re voluntary. Only granny can choose to die; no one else can choose for her.

But let’s accept that greedy relatives have coerced her into thinking she has a “duty to die” (another favourite expression of opponents).

To be assisted to die under these laws, granny has to somehow convince two doctors, independent of each other – one a specialist in whatever her problem may be – that her suffering is so unbearable, and also so untreatable, that the only humane option is to help her to die.

That’s what the law says. Unbearable and untreatable. And it’s got to be in writing as well as spoken, so there’s a record of it. Granny turning up feeling vulnerable and depressed because her heartless relatives have put her up to it isn’t going to get past square one.



What will happen is this: the minute granny presents saying “I want to die”, the doctor is going to ask her “Why?” She’s going to look at all of granny’s symptoms. She’s going to want to know what’s going on in granny’s life that’s making her feel like dying. Most likely, she’s going to refer granny to a counsellor or a social support network.



What she’s not going to do is recommend granny be helped to die. First, because it’s against the law. And, second, because if she does she’s going to be caught out. Remember, not only is there a second independent doctor looking over the first doctor’s work and vice versa, but there’s also a written record of granny’s request.



An early shot of Andrew Denton with his father. Photograph: Supplied

Unless granny’s been able to invent a compelling list of medical symptoms that meet the definition of “unbearable and untreatable”, her letter is not going to look good when the euthanasia review committee casts its eye over the case. Because that’s what happens: by law, a committee of doctors, lawyers and ethicists looks at every case. It will get granny’s written notes, plus the doctor’s case notes. The coroner will get them, too. And if anyone has any doubts about what was done or why, the doctors will be called in to explain themselves.

A coerced and vulnerable granny doesn’t fit anyone’s definition of “unbearable and untreatable” suffering, and any doctor who decides it does runs the risk, at best, of losing their licence and, at worst, of being sent to jail.

Killing granny because she’s a burden (or for the inheritance – another favourite scenario) is a near impossibility. How can I be sure? Because in Belgium and the Netherlands, where euthanasia has been legal for more than a decade, it isn’t happening. You won’t find credible evidence of vulnerable people being coerced to die in the official records. You won’t find streams of angry relatives demanding to know why granny was killed. You won’t find politicians pushing to change the laws because of reports of granny-killing.

And you won’t find the elderly in these countries complaining either. I know, because I asked them.

Not only did peak elderly groups in Belgium and the Netherlands tell me they could report no cases of their members being abused or coerced, they pointed out something else: that rather than threatening the elderly, these laws empower them.

Unlike grannies in Australia, these people know that should the worst happen at the end of their life, they can talk to their doctor and be offered a legal choice about how they die. Instead of a lingering and painful death, they can choose to die peacefully and on their terms.

It is a sad irony that by successfully arguing mythical threats to hypothetical grannies, opponents of assisted dying in Australia continue to allow real harm to actual grannies.

So many Australian families have scarifying stories of family members dying badly. The statistics about elderly suicide in Australia – not lonely people who are depressed, but people from loving homes who have irreversible, chronic diseases and who see no way out but to kill themselves violently – are shocking.

Testifying to the state parliament’s end of life choices inquiry last year, a Victorian coroner, John Olle, estimated that one elderly Victorian died in this way every week. And the National Coronial Information Service reports that every week, two Australians over the age of 80 take their lives. The most common method? Hanging.

It is these grannies who deserve protection from our politicians.



When are they going to act?

• Andrew Denton’s new 17-part podcast, Better Off Dead, explores the issues surrounding voluntary assisted dying in Australia and beyond. Denton will appear at Giant Dwarf theatre on Tuesday, 1 March