LIVE AND LET DIE

His supporters consider him a saint. His critics revile him. Philip Nitschke is undoubtedly one of the country’s most polarising figures but what actually happens at one of his euthanasia workshops? Step inside Robina Community Centre with the man known a

ke declares. “People want to end their lives for various reasons. Often they’re medical but not always. We have a lot of people with social reasons wanting to end their lives (and) it’s not up to others to judge your reasons.”

It’s a little before midday and the Robina Community Centre auditorium is temporarily home to a couple of hundred Gold Coasters – and the odd fiery Brisbane grandma – hanging off the every word of the Exit International founder.

As part of a five-week tour of 10 Australian cities and towns, Dr Nitschke is spreading the gospel of his end-oflife advocacy organisation under the banner of its “Euthanasia and Suicide for Dummies” workshops.

Two decades ago, he came to prominence as the first doctor in the world to administer a legal, lethal voluntary injection under a short-lived NT law.

Now living in Amsterdam, he continues to fight for a person’s right to die, to infuriate the medical fraternity and teach the masses how to prepare for a peaceful death.

“It’s becoming easier than it’s ever been (to kill yourself),” he tells his audience.

“If you organise things, you learn how it is you can peacefully and reliably end your life, perhaps by getting drugs you know will work. You put them safely away, locked away. You hope you’ll never need them but it’s very comforting to know if things go bad that you can just go to your cupboard and end your life.

“If you don’t plan ahead and you’re really sick – and we get emails every day from people in this situation – the question is who’s going to get (the drugs) for you because that’s assisting.

“(Suicide) is a lawful process … but the law says you can’t be assisted and the person who helps might be looking at 10 years in a Queensland prison.”

The opening half-hour of Dr Nitschke’s workshop is an overview open to anyone.

Then he closes the doors to all but his paid-up members ($100 annually or life membership for $1000) and gets down to the nitty-gritty of dying.

“That’s when I’ll very much go into the details of the drugs,” he explains.

“How you get them, what drugs work, what don’t work, why you shouldn’t be stockpiling your morphine, the prob- lems of this, the benefits of that, how gas works.

“(Some people) feel this is a meeting that shouldn’t take place … they suggest people could be wandering down the streets of Robina, see an interesting meeting and walk in and get dangerous information and walk out five minutes later and kill themselves.

“To head that off we say that when you stay for the workshop we need you to fill out a disclaimer … a quaint legal document that says you’re going to take no notice whatsoever of anything I say.”

Not for the first time laughter ripples through the room. Befitting a crowd that is open to discussing death, they are also happy to laugh in its face.

“You’re only going to die once so you may as well have the best drug,” Nitschke says when discussing Nembutal, a line that prompts the wide smiles he knows it will. “Why settle for second best?”

When the open part of the workshop reaches its end, Dr Nitschke calls a short recess and spends much of the break being approached by strangers thanking him for his efforts.

Among the converted is Pamela Holdsworth from Southport.

“I have witnessed two family members die really awful deaths and I’ve just lost a girlfriend to a painful, drawn-out death,” the 72-year-old says.

“I don’t want that to happen to me. I want the option of flicking a switch when the time comes.”

Listening in, Sandra White – she of the dog and ex-husband in Brisbane – then voices her own fear.

“I’m healthy but would hate to be financially dependent on anyone,” she says. “If I don’t have enough money, I will seriously consider it.

“That’s not a medical reason – it’s a social one – but it would be bye-bye. I’ve had a good time and it would be a couple of glasses of Moet, a little Nembutal and off I’d go.”

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