‘ OUR PEOPLE ARE DYING NOW’

Dr Huhana Hickey ( pictured) says she has faced death often.

The former legal academic and disability advocate, who has multiple sclerosis, is hospitalised once or twice a year. She has a history of depression and has made multiple suicide attempts.

“In January I was suddenly so ill, lost a bit of weight, couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink, infections; I was really, really sick. They had said to me if I hadn’t got to the hospital within six hours, chances are I was going to be irreversibly sick.”

Hickey, who lives in Auckland, says her condition would likely make her eligible for assisted dying under the End of Life Choice Act. But she is strongly against the law change and will vote “no” in the referendum. One of her concerns is the difficulty in estimating if someone would die within six months, — one of the proposed law’s safeguards. Medical experts in New Zealand say clinicians are wrong in predicting death within six months 25 per cent of the time. Cancer prognosis in particular is becoming less certain as more effective therapies are developed for treatment.

Hickey said she believed that it could put Ma ¯ ori and disabled people at risk. Public health systems rationed care for conditions like kidney failure, which affected Ma ¯ ori and Pacific people at a greater rate, she said.

“If we’re underfunding healthcare and we don’t have a cultural lens for palliative care, then people will choose euthanasia out of desperation, not really out of real choice. Until you address health inequities, until we have that equal playing field, not all people will freely choose.”

( The law’s sponsor, Act leader David Seymour, rejects this argument, saying the most privileged people are the most likely to access euthanasia because they are able to navigate the health system and jump over the multiple bureaucratic hurdles.)

Hickey said there was a dark history in New Zealand of Ma ¯ ori having medical treatment withdrawn against their wishes.

She cited two controversial cases: Rau Williams, who died in

1997, and Robert Ngamu, who died in

2010. In both cases, the men died after hospital medical staff defied their wishes and withdrew treatment.

“Some are saying that Ma ¯ ori are quite safe under this new bill,” she said. “We are not even safe now.

“Our people are dying now. We don’t need euthanasia laws for Ma ¯ ori. We’ve already got it.”