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EUTHANASIA LAWS BILL 1996

20th March 1997

Senator LUNDY (Australian Capital Territory)(10.33 p.m.)--I would like in the first instance to acknowledge the letters sent to me by the concerned citizens in the Australian Capital Territory and other parts of Australia. I want to thank you for taking the time and the effort to send me those letters to let me know your thoughts. I know the position I am taking on this bill will not please all those whom I represent, but after much contemplation of the widest range of arguments for and against the Andrews bill, I know that my decision to oppose the bill is sound.

The passage of Kevin Andrews anti-euthanasia bill will undermine the democratic principles upon which Australia is based and will cause great damage to the social fabric of our society. I want to talk about the messages that we will send to all Australians, and indeed the entire world, if we do not allow the Northern Territory's euthanasia law to remain in place.

The first message we will send if we pass the Andrews bill is that Australia is not a tolerant place, that it is not a place that embraces the diversity of its peoples and of their cultural, religious, ethical and political backgrounds and beliefs. I believe that these differences deserve respect. I also believe that this parliament needs to make a lot more effort, certainly more effort than it has done in the past year, to affirm its commitment to making sure that Australia is a place where diversity and tolerance are values that are both enshrined in law and respected in practice. The federal parliament must state its commitment to this principle when it really counts, and it really counts now.

The Senate has an obligation to defeat the Andrews bill because passing it would be a statement that the views of some Australians about what gives life and death dignity and meaning are more deserving of respect than the views on these issues of other Australians. That kind of statement would be particularly offensive in this case for two reasons.

The first reason is that it would send another undesirable message that the Senate is not willing to recognise that the church and the state should be separate. Passing the Andrews bill would mean that the Senate is more willing to uphold the values of certain religious groups in our society. In particular, it would affirm the perspective put forward on this matter by the church and its supporters, who have vehemently opposed the Northern Territory legislation and have mounted a well-resourced, strategic and highly emotive lobbying campaign in support of the Andrews bill.

The Catholic Church and others are, of course, entitled to express their opinion on euthanasia, and the Senate should consider these views with respect. The Senate also has a responsibility, however, to realise that the group that shouts the loudest is not necessarily the voice that is representative of the Australian community as a whole. I remind the Senate that Australia is a largely secular society and many Australians who are religious are not Christian.

The second reason passing the Andrews bill would send an unacceptable message of intolerance is that the subject matter of this bill and of the Northern Territory law it seeks to override goes to the very heart of how each person makes sense of their own life as that life ends. Different people make sense of their own lives in different ways and we must not seek to impose one set of deeply personal views about life and death on people who do not share them and who may even find them repugnant. The Supreme Court of the United States of America puts it in this way:

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.

The Supreme Court was actually talking about abortion there, which is another issue that many people feel very strongly about. Abortion is another thing that some minority groups in Australia think the law should prohibit absolutely. But Australian law now says that women can choose abortion in a range of circumstances because it recognises that it is not appropriate for those minority views to be thrust upon people who do not hold them. We senators should send a similar message of tolerance when we vote on the Andrews bill.

There is a second undesirable message we would send if we passed the Andrews bill. That message is that the democratically elected representatives of the Australian people refuse to listen to the people who in fact elected them. We would send the message that we really do not care what the people of Australia are saying to us about this extremely important and personal issue. We would be saying that we are wilfully blind and deaf to their pleas for death on their own terms, and we would send the message that we--the powerful people, the ones who make the laws that affect ordinary people's lives--do not care how much ordinary people suffer as they die. I cannot shut those people out for the sake of some other people's interpretation of abstract notions of the sanctity of life or the greater good. We need to develop our laws and public policy in a way that takes account of and responds to the particular cases of extreme suffering. We must not sweep them under the carpet.

Interestingly, Senator Abetz and many of his colleagues also claim that legalising voluntary euthanasia would undermine our campaigns against youth suicide, because it amounts to saying that it is okay for someone to be killed because life is too difficult. There is no doubt that youth suicide is a major problem in Australia. Our suicide rate for young people aged 15 to 24 is among the highest in the world.

Our young people kill themselves for a variety of reasons. They kill themselves because of the social and economic situations they find themselves in, situations they cannot cope with. We need to take steps to improve those social and economic situations. Different factors will lead different individuals to attempt suicide, but unemployment, family and other personal problems, physical abuse, sexual abuse, homelessness, a history of substance abuse and mental illness have all been identified as factors leading to youth suicide.

But our young people do not kill themselves because we legalised suicide, which was done as a response to the terrible plight of people who failed in their attempts to end their lives because we realised that the last thing they needed was to be branded as criminals. We legalised suicide in response to a difficult social reality. Why can't we respond with similar courage and compassion to another difficult social reality: the plight of desperately suffering people who want their doctors to be able to help them to die?

Returning to youth suicide: just as our young people do not kill themselves because we legalised suicide, nor will they kill themselves because we refuse to overturn the Northern Territory's legalisation of voluntary euthanasia for suffering, terminally ill adults. But if we do overturn the Northern Territory legislation we could be in fact contributing to making our youth suicide problem worse, not better. We would be reinforcing a message to young people that says, `We won't listen to what you have to say about what you need because we have other more important concerns and you are unimportant.'

Whilst our actions will send these messages to the community, we are also getting messages back, and I would like to turn briefly to the issue of polling of public opinion. By now we are all familiar with the fact that an overwhelming majority of Australians, at least three-quarters of us--including the people in Kevin Andrews's own electorate--approve of legalising voluntary euthanasia in the way that the Northern Territory has done. As representatives of these people, can we ignore this strong indication? I am not advocating a poll driven decision making process, but I am making the point that, by virtue of the application of the conscience vote to this bill, the usual mechanisms that provide guidance or provide the linkages to the community, as described and practised in my party's rules and processes, do not apply. We are on our own. But to ignore completely this strong indication of the community's view is the ultimate indulgence.

Of the 76 senators in the Australian parliament, 23 of us are women. It is interesting to note that the vast majority of these women senators have indicated so far that they will vote against the Andrews bill. We could speculate about the reasons why the women in this chamber seem to be generally less willing than the men to support Kevin Andrews's attempt to dictate other Australians' decisions about their own bodies and their own lives. While you are thinking about that interesting question, we could also note that it is women--mothers, daughters, partners, nurses and friends--who actually perform most of the day-to-day care of dying people.

We could also note that Australian women on average live a lot longer than Australian men, so we women are more likely to end up in a situation where we have the kind of illness that makes us want a doctor to help us end our lives. We could also note that old, sick women are not a pathetic bunch of weak and passive victims who need protection from their subservient selves. That claim was made in a recent Canberra Times article by Helen Verlander, who is a staffer in Kevin Andrews's office, although that was not acknowledged at the time. I reject this wholeheartedly, as it relies on insulting assumptions about women, insulting assumptions about older people and insulting assumptions about people with terminal illnesses. Identification with one or all of these groups does not mean an individual is less capable than the rest of us of working out what she or he really wants.

I refuse to tell other Australians that I will not let them make this fundamentally important personal decision themselves, and I refuse to tell them that I am better placed to make decisions about their bodies and about their lives. I would not do it on abortion, I would not do it on a range of issues and I certainly will not do it on voluntary euthanasia.

There is a third unacceptable message that we would send if we passed the Andrews bill. That message would be that the Australian parliament is prepared to step onto a very dangerous, slippery slope. That is not the slippery slope that Senator Abetz, Senator Harradine and other supporters of the Kevin Andrews bill talk about; it is a different slippery slope.

Their claim is that, if we allow the Northern Territory's law to stand, we will inevitably slide into a situation where we tolerate killing off people without their request or, indeed, against their wishes. I do not agree with their assertion. That is all it is: an assertion that is not supported by any evidence at all. The slippery slope that I am talking about is the slide toward greater and greater interference in the human rights of Australian citizens, affected by a hidden moral agenda that seems to be influencing the federal parliament more and more. But perhaps it is not so hidden any more. It is the agenda of the Lyons Forum, the agenda of the driving forces supporting Kevin Andrews's bill. It is an agenda that is seeking to impose extremely conservative religious and moral views on Australian laws and policy regulating a range of social issues apart from voluntary euthanasia. It is an agenda that is against the interests, values and beliefs of all but a tiny handful of Australians who I can only describe as zealots.

During the course of the Senate committee's inquiry, Senator Abetz at one point referred disparagingly to `the warriors in the euthanasia debate' who support the Northern Territory law. I am more worried about the moral crusaders who would interpret the passage of the Andrews Bill as an encouraging sign: a sign that their political strategy was successful in this parliament, and a sign that they have a chance of implementing other parts of their agenda. If the Andrews bill is passed it would stand as a dangerous precedent. It would embolden this moral minority to try to pass legislation to remove the territories' powers to make laws permitting abortion, X-rated videos, prostitution and any other matter that they choose to describe as immoral or anti-family. If you acknowledge that this possibility does exist, then you acknowledge that this slippery slope exists, hence your vote in favour of this legislation would endorse this agenda. That is the slippery slope we need to be worried about.

The Andrews bill shows that the territories are particularly vulnerable to the implementation of this legislative agenda of moral conservatism. I am not speaking as any senator; I am speaking as a senator on behalf of the people of the ACT. There are only four senators whose electorates will be directly affected by the Andrews bill. We all oppose it on the basis that it seeks to impinge upon the role and responsibility of the duly elected territory legislative assemblies. We oppose it on the basis that it unconscionably exploits a constitutional provision that technically allows the federal parliament to make laws for the territories. We oppose it on the basis that it violates longstanding constitutional convention, that it is undemocratic and that it unacceptably discriminates between Australian citizens who live in the territories and those who live in the states.

These defects with the Andrews bill will make it politically unacceptable. They also leave the bill open to the possibility of a legal challenge under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights if it is passed. The individual claimant could be a terminally ill person, a carer of a terminally ill person, a territory voter or, indeed, a member of one of the territory assemblies. Many in the ACT have already declared their intention in this regard. As I said, there are only four territory senators. The other 71 may feel more inclined to support the Andrews bill simply because they feel that their support for this bill will not affect the laws in their state or the powers of their state legislatures. That is quite true--but only for the time being.

I urge all senators to think about the messages that passing the Andrews bill will send to all Australians, not just to Australians in the territories. They are messages of intolerance, dispassion, arrogance and powerful moral bigotry. They are messages that deserve no place in Australian law, public policy or society. I will be opposing this bill, and I urge all of you to do the same.