Euthanasia criteria-creep concerns
As a local government organisation we’re always accountable to Southlanders and that’s the way it should be. Recently, we’ve been subject to scrutiny about managing conflicts of interest at the council. There has been some talk that we haven’t managed conflicts of interest appropriately and I want to clear up any misconceptions about that.
Media commentary during September focused on our director of policy, planning and regulatory services and his wife’s company, which has expertise in the area of environmental engineering, particularly industrial waste, hazardous sites and air quality.
The director declared his interests up front – he’s a shareholder in her company – and flagged with me the potential for a conflict of interest with his role at the council. We put practices in place to ensure he had no involvement in whether or not the company was engaged, or in any decisions relating to work done by the company.
We had taken action and decided on a plan. This was the right thing to do, even though we didn’t have a formal policy to back it up at the time.
To give an independent perspective, I asked Bruce Robertson, the independent advisor to our Organisational Performance and Audit Committee (OPAC), to review our approach and to provide recommendations. He has both the expertise and the integrity to conduct a review of this nature as a former Assistant Auditor-General who works with many other councils throughout New Zealand.
In his subsequent report, which I have released on our website, he says he found no evidence that the director was involved in any way in decisions to engage the company or in the monitoring of its work, and that everyone had behaved according to the plan.
He did find the council’s processes informal and lacking in documentation, and made recommendations to improve this. It’s important that the council takes the learnings out of situations such as this, so it can adapt and improve.
The report also stated that the council’s new conflict of interest policy was fit for purpose.
We began work on this policy back in February as part of the council’s ongoing programme to review and improve our internal processes, and approved it in early October. This policy will provide the foundation and guidance for ensuring a more structured, consistent and transparent process for managing conflicts of interest.
The policy draws on the Office of the Controller and Auditor-General’s (OAG) guidance for public entities, which notes that conflicts are inevitable in a small country and not necessarily a problem if they are managed properly. This includes the management of adverse public perception.
Environment Southland is a knowledge organisation. In our role to lead the management of Southland’s natural resources – land, freshwater, coast, air – we are dealing with complex, long-term problems. This means we often need to employ and work with people who have specific skills and who may be experts in their fields. These people are professional peers and are usually well connected throughout the country. As the OAG points out, personal relationships between some of them are inevitable. With regard to the situation between our director and his wife’s company, the report by Bruce Robertson notes there was a perception by some that the director’s role and his interests in the company were incompatible. The report advises that the question of compatibility is a matter of judgement for the chief executive in consultation with the OPAC. I was interested to read from D J Wynn-Williams’ letter that Michael Laws was emotional when describing his mother’s advanced dementia, clearly considering that such advocacy would help the cause of David Seymour’s euthanasia bill.
Wynn-Williams is correct to point out that there is no provision for dementia patients to be euthanised under this legislation – yet. But what Wynn-Williams calls ‘‘criteria creep’’ will happen as surely as night follows day.
We need only to look at jurisdictions which have already legalised euthanasia.
In the Netherlands not only psychiatric patients but those suffering from dementia may now be killed.
One notorious case involved the secret drugging of an elderly woman by her doctor. After waking up, the woman struggled while the doctor attempted to give her a lethal injection, all the while ignoring the woman’s protests to let her live. Her family then held her down so that the euthanasia could be successfully completed.
I was particularly interested to hear that the meeting in Gore included a push for euthanasia for those suffering from dementia. I have heard of other public meetings with similar stories. One of them was told by a member of the audience. When the speaker had finished, David Seymour replied simply, ‘‘And that is exactly why we need this bill’’.
The bill is not even passed and even its promoter is already extending its provisions.
Melissa Hardy child euthanasia. In 1995, he himself sponsored the Death with Dignity Bill which was drawn out of the private members’ ballot.
The Laws bill failed at First Reading after what appeared to have been a ‘‘promising’’ campaign for its acceptance. What the public – and therefore MPs – could not stomach was the suggestion that it might be used to cause the premature deaths of New Zealand children. In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed. Daniel 7:13-14 trophy standard.
It may be a case that the current herd of spikers need time to find their manhood and hopefully they will breed success in the open fields of Southland.
Mind you, these current Stags have at least something to be proud of. They have managed to take away one record off a North Island team this season.
Goes to show, the North Island isn’t good at everything.
Hope the proposed Southland Hinds (women’s) team gets off the ground running and shows off Southland’s talent.
Mind you, If the current Stags can’t keep pace, the breeding cycle of the future looks grim.
S
‘‘He did find the council’s processes informal and lacking in documentation, and made recommendations to improve this.’’
Fagerlund