Richard Di Natale says party will introduce a bill in 2018 to allow drugs such as Nembutal to be imported into Australia

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The federal Greens will push for increased access to drugs for voluntary assisted dying and seek to overturn state and territory bans following Victoria’s move to legalise it.

On Sunday the Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, outlined the party’s plan to introduce a bill in 2018 to allow drugs such as Nembutal to be imported to Australia and renew a push to lift the federal ban on territories legislating for voluntary assisted dying.

Victoria’s laws – which passed the upper house last week and will return to the lower house for final approval – could then be used as a blueprint for other states and territories to consider voluntary assisted dying.

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“If we’re going to have these compassionate laws in Victoria, we need to make sure all other Australians have access as well,” Di Natale told ABC24. “We feel that whether you live on one side of the Murray or the other shouldn’t determine if you get access to these laws.”

Victoria is set to become the first state to legalise voluntary assisted dying after more than 50 legislative attempts across Australia. In November the New South Wales upper house narrowly voted down a similar move.

Di Natale said the federal government could “immediately overturn the ban” on the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory legislating voluntary assisted dying.

The Northern Territory introduced voluntary assisted dying laws in 1995 but the Howard government banned the practice in 1997, using the commonwealth’s power to make laws for the territories.

Di Natale said controls on drugs are “a regulatory mess at the moment” because they can be stopped at the border, preventing importation.

“We need to make sure these drugs are treated like others, that the process for approvals and allowing them to come into the country is facilitated and so this is part of what needs to happen, to streamline the passage of drugs to allow people that choice and control that many Australians so desperately want,” he said.

The new Greens bill would adopt the Victorian law as a model, proposing safeguards including restricting access to people over 18 years of age, requiring people to initiate requests themselves on three separate occasions, requiring medical assessments from two GPs and providing exemptions for doctors who conscientiously object to participating.

Di Natale said each jurisdiction could have a debate and set their own safeguards on voluntary assisted dying.

The Labor senator Katy Gallagher has also supported voluntary assisted dying and a push for territories to regain their power to legalise it, through a private members bill introduced in 2015 but stuck in the Senate.

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Labor’s national platform does not state a position on euthanasia, suggesting it could be determined by a conscience vote and would be opposed by conservatives. The Queensland Labor government has backed the introduction of euthanasia legislation.

Di Natale, a former general practitioner, said that many people wanted “the comfort of knowing it’s an option” even if many will never use voluntary assisted dying.

“I’ve looked after people who have said, ‘I really worry about what the end is going to be like, and I worry that palliative care may not provide me with the support or the comfort that I need’.”

He said that many suffer “very painful and ugly deaths” including “people who lie there for days, drowning in a pool of their own secretions because they can’t breathe”.

“If you feel that for you in your final few months of life it is something that will allow you to have a dignified death, then who are we to deny that to people?”