Queensland warned not to tear apart assisted dying bill with amendments that create unworkable barriers
Leading Australian experts in voluntary assisted dying law have urged the Queensland parliament not to tear apart the state’s “measured” legislation, amid concerns opponents will push for amendments that create unworkable barriers to access.
Queensland MPs will vote on whether to allow voluntary assisted dying, with safeguards, later this month.
Under the Queensland draft legislation – written by the state’s independent law reform commission – voluntary assisted dying would be restricted to people with an advanced and progressive condition that causes intolerable suffering and is expected to cause death within a year.
The person must have decisionmaking capacity and would have to be separately and independently assessed by two doctors. They would then be required to make three separate requests, over at least nine days.
Lindy Willmott, a professor at the Queensland University of Technology and one of the country’s leading experts on end-of-life law, says the proposal had considered experiences in other states and was “a safe and measured bill”.
“It gives choice to terminally ill patients while still operating safely, including protecting the vulnerable in the community,” Willmott said.
Some ultraconservative MPs, churches and Christian lobby groups have focused campaigning efforts on criticising particular elements of the legislation, rather than pushing their fundamental objections to voluntary euthanasia.
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The lobby group, Cherish Life, says in an email to members it is outright opposed to the laws, but that its fallback position would be to seek a series of amendments, including mandating the involvement of specialists and a psychiatrist.
The most prominent objection in Queensland has been from faith-based hospital and aged care organisations, who took out a full-page advertisement in the Courier Mail last week.
They claim the laws would “force voluntary assisted dying on hospitals and aged care facilities with deep objections to it”.
“The bill will deny patients, residents and staff the choice of living and working in hospitals and aged care facilities where voluntary assisted dying is not provided.”
The claim is based on a part of the legislation that considers the rare circumstance in which a resident of a faith-based facility wants to access voluntary assisted dying but is too frail to be moved to another place.
In that circumstance, external doctors or specialists would ultimately be allowed to access the facility to provide VAD. There is no requirement for any doctor, or organisation, with an objection to participate.
The Catholic church in Western Australia has spoken about how it proposes to work under similar arrangements.
Willmott said she was worried about the extent of media coverage about the objections of faith-based medical organisations, and that the result will be a push to “pile on additional safeguards” that were not necessary and restricted access.
She said amendments would alter the balance of “a coherent, measured piece of legislation”.
“I think there are two issues. One is about values, the other is about evidence,” Willmott said.
“It’s critical that our MPs are transparent about the values they hold and … whether or not they think there should be legislation in the first place.
“I think it’s very legitimate for reasonable people to come to different views about whether legislation should be enacted. They may hold the sanctity of life about other values. That’s fine, but they should be transparent.
“The second thing is about evidence. We’ve seen statements made which aren’t supported by facts. There’s two decades of evidence available about what is actually happening under VAD [and] we should rely on that evidence … that it’s possible to draft legislation that protects the vulnerable.”
David Muir from the Clem Jones trust, a group lobbying MPs about VAD laws, said its aim is to keep the bill intact from an expected onslaught of amendments.