Emails between Dr Philip Nitschke and a Perth man who took his own life included specific information about ways to commit suicide, an appeals tribunal into the voluntary euthanasia advocate's suspension from practising medicine has heard.

Dr Nitschke began his appeal on Monday against the Medical Board of Australia's (MBA) decision to use emergency powers to suspend him in July after he admitted to supporting 45-year-old Nigel Brayley's decision to end his life.

In a separate development, the MBA has also referred Dr Nitschke to the NT's Health Professional Review Tribunal for 12 matters of alleged misconduct.

At the hearing in Darwin the MBA's Lisa Chapman said in emails between the pair, dated April 2014, Dr Nitschke chose to be registered as a doctor.

"If he hadn't, the board would have no jurisdiction (to suspend his licence)," she said.

Ms Chapman said the emails contained very specific information such as "how to take the peaceful pill".

"This is not a debate about voluntary euthanasia," she said. "It is not a debate about rational suicide.

"This is a very precisely focused interim hearing regarding Mr Nitschke's conduct into the death of a man.

"He obtained scant information about Mr Brayley before he died."

I had brief dealings with Brayley: Nitschke

Speaking ahead of the hearing, Dr Nitschke said colleagues sympathetic to the cause, as well as potential candidates for voluntary euthanasia, would be following the outcome of the appeal.

"This clash of ideas is what is going to be played out and it is an important decision," he said. "A lot of doctors and a lot of people in the broader public will be watching it closely."

Dr Nitschke said he had "brief dealings" with Mr Brayley.

"I have a lot of dealings with a lot of people who are ending or thinking about ending their lives – to try and claim because of my position as a doctor I have to frustrate and thwart their plans is a ludicrous notion."

He said the board would argue any contact with people, however brief, constituted a doctor-patient relationship - a proposition he ridiculed.

"It really is coming down to a very fundamental difference in positions by the medical board and my beliefs. It is those beliefs that are going to be argued out over the next days," Dr Nitschke said.

"The medical board have made it clear in their submissions they find that particular view, support for rational suicide, not compatible with modern medicine.”

Outside the tribunal hearing, Nitschke supporter Bertha Franklin said her son suffered chronic bowl disease.

She said he had been accepted into a clinic in Switzerland where he can legally end his life.

Ms Franklin said it was unfair he could not stay with family in Australia to legally end his life.

"You should be able to do it in your own home and not have any body judging you or police coming to your door."

Suicide option needs to 'be enshrined'

Dr Nitschke told the ABC his old foe, the Australian Medical Association (AMA), should keep out of deciding whether people should have the right to assisted suicide.

"I am arguing that every rational adult has the right to determine what they do with their own body... and that may include ending their own lives. The medical profession should keep out of it; they are not a body that should be controlling options that rational adults take," he said.

Before today's hearing, Dr Nitschke's barrister Peter Nugent described the appeal as "the trial of an idea".

"It is a controversial subject," he said. "Mr Nitschke is a controversial figure.

"The views which he holds are not abhorrent, they're not out there, they are not even out of step with mainstream Australia's view."

Dr Nitschke said the opportunity for people to choose to end their life needed to be "enshrined as an option".

"Individuals in a society must have the ability to make decisions over their own lives. It may not be something the rest of us like, but we need to fight for that option.

"We need to enshrine that as an absolute option. We shouldn’t be denying people the option from taking this step and denying them from having good information simply so it will make them comply with what we see as an ideal society."

The hearing is expected to last five days.