KEITH WOODS’ COLUMN
Surely the time has come to allow the terminally ill choose their own fate.
IDON’T know if you have ever watched a loved one pass away from cancer. I have. It is not an easy thing to endure. Cancer creeps up on its victim. It often appears to start slowly. There may be few symptoms. The worst thing is the treatment.
But in the end it is quicker. It envelops the body. And very often it causes pain, terrible pain.
We are blessed with brilliant, caring medical staff working in palliative care in this country. They go above and beyond. The work they do, in harrowing circumstances, is nothing short of extraordinary.
I don’t know how they have the mental strength to endure.
But there comes a point, towards the end, when there is only so much they can do. Nature’s evil will have its way. The cancer will cause agonies that no morphine can fully dull.
At such a point, a beloved pet would be calmly put to sleep by a veterinarian. But for humans, there is no such mercy. The pain must be endured until the body finally gives way.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We have had the ability to deal with this issue for many years, but have lacked the moral courage.
The Northern Territory had a voluntary euthanasia law as far back as 1995.
Carpenter Bob Dent, a prostate cancer sufferer, became the first person in Australia to die legally with the help of a doctor when he made use of the law.
The day before he died in September, 1996, Bob wrote a remarkable letter addressed to members of Federal parliament.
It detailed the many procedures, the drugs, the “rollercoaster of pain” he endured. It made clear the end was near and he’d had enough.
“If you disagree with voluntary euthanasia, then don’t use it, but don’t deny me the right to use it if and when I want to,” he wrote.
Sadly, Bob’s plea fell on deaf ears.
Federal parliament passed an Act that scuttled the NT’s law just six months later.
Bob’s wife Judy subsequently became a campaigner for the right of others to die with the same dignity her husband was afforded.
“You have no idea how much peace of mind my husband had when he got his (legal) papers signed. If they are back in control again their mental suffering is much relieved,” Mrs Dent said. “They die quickly because they know they are in control.”
It has taken more than 20 years of campaigning by people like Judy for euthanasia laws to return to the agenda.
Victoria passed a law in 2017 that will finally come into effect next year. It is, for the most part, an excellent piece of legislation.
It limits voluntary euthanasia to people judged by doctors to have only six months or less to live.
And because we live in a world where some greedy souls will deprave themselves and poison granny’s tea at the slightest hint of an inheritance, the legislation also includes 68 safeguards, including new criminal offences for anyone who might attempt to coerce a patient into taking their life.
Now it is Queensland’s turn. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has announced a parliamentary inquiry to consider assisted dying laws.
The inquiry will take 12 months, which has disappointed some campaigners.
But this is what it looks like when Ms Palaszczuk decides to move on an issue.
We have seen a very similar process with the issue of laws regarding child killers.
Following a 12-month review by the Sentencing Advisory Council, the law is to be greatly strengthened to ensure longer sentences – a development this column finds very welcome.
The fact that most Queenslanders would have accepted such a recommendation in an instant is really neither here nor there. This is how this most cautious of premiers gets things done. And it’s fair to say that careful deliberation is appropriate for so sensitive a topic as that of assisted suicide.
So we should congratulate Ms Palaszczuk for launching the inquiry.
It has been welcomed by people with the most harrowing of personal experiences, like Elanora woman Lorraine Allen-Hider who watched her husband John die a slow and agonising death, something she describes as “the most distressing thing I have ever seen”.
“It turns me grey being at the mercy of politicians and having it (the euthanasia issue) dragged through parliament,” Ms Allen-Hilder said.
“(But) at least there is something happening.”
It’s hard to disagree. Hard, but for some, not impossible.
Lobby group Cherish Life Queensland has slammed the inquiry as the expansion of “state-sanctioned killing”.
And for reasons I find hard to fathom, the LNP is opposed too.
“We think the government has other things it should be focusing on,” said Deputy Opposition Leader Tim Mander. “Things about cost of living issues, and traffic and congestion issues.”
If we know one thing for certain, it is that cost of living and congestion issues are not going to be solved in the lifetime of people suffering a terminal illness.
That is no reason to delay giving those people a measure of our focus too.
I have seen loved ones pass away in pain. I have felt the deep and wrenching helplessness of knowing there is no more I can do to help them.
But we have an opportunity now to ensure fewer Queenslanders suffer the same fate in future. It’s a chance we must take.