The voluntary assisted dying bill, will allow terminally ill patients to end their own lives with the help of trusted medical professionals.
TheHerald has long argued in favour of this measure because it believes individuals have a right to choose not to prolong lives which they know will bring only excruciating and hopeless torment.
The ugly truth is that without access to assisted dying many people have resorted to the horrible and undignified gamble of unassisted suicide.
The Victorian coroner has estimated that about 40 or 50 people with terminal illnesses take their lives each year in that state to end their suffering.
Many people in NSW are not convinced by these arguments. Liberal MP Damien Tudehope who voted against the bill described Thursday as a “dark day”.
It is important to acknowledge that he speaks for many well-intentioned religious people who have theological concerns about assisted dying.
But the practical criticisms of the bill raised by religious conservatives during debate are unfounded.
NSW has drawn on similar legislation which is already in force in all other states and produced a cautious model with strong safeguards against abuse.
Before lethal medication is dispensed,two doctors will have to conduct two separate consultations five days apart and they must establish that each individual is acting freely without any outside pressure and with a clear awareness of what they are doing.
With all these measures in place,the number of people who will actually use assisted dying is much lower than implied by the bill’s opponents.
In the first 18 months in Victoria,697 people asked for a first consultation,347 reached the stage of receiving the lethal medication and only 276 actually administered it.
,who is terminally ill with ovarian cancer,spoke for many when she said the bill will reassure many people who do not ultimately use it.
“I am hoping that my suffering will not be so great at the end of my life and I am hoping to use palliative care services but it will be a comfort to me to know voluntary assisted dying exists and is lawful in NSW,” O’Sullivan said in Friday’s paper.
The bill has struck a sensible compromise on the difficult issue of the rights of residents in religious hospitals and nursing homes. The institutions will not be forced to offer assisted dying but the NSW legislation goes further than some states by stipulating that institutions will not be able to prevent transfer to other facilities.
The passage of this controversial measure,which has been under debate in NSW for at least 20 years,provides a clear indication that social attitudes are changing.
Religious sentiment has long had a stronger hold on NSW politics than comparable states. In the same-sex marriage plebiscite in 2017,NSW voted 42 per cent “No” compared to just 35 per cent in Victoria.
This is partly because NSW is more religious. In the most recent 2016 census,32 per cent of Victorians said they had “no religion” but only 25.1 per cent in NSW.
Yet religious lobbies inside the major parties and,until recently in Fred Nile’s Christian Democrats,sometimes wield disproportionate power that has frustrated consideration in NSW of many progressive reforms.
While neither Premier Dominic Perrottet nor Opposition Leader Chris Minns voted in favour of the assisted dying bill,the tide seems to be turning. Since the same-sex marriage bill,NSW has decriminalised abortion and now passed assisted dying.
It is noteworthy that the parliament passed both of these measures by way of a conscience vote.
These have been rare in the past decade and former premier Gladys Berejiklian even said after the abortion legislation in 2019 that she would only allow one conscience vote per term.
Independent MP Alex Greenwich,however,convinced Perrottet to bring forward the assisted dying bill as the price of support for the minority government. But this should not be a one-off.
Conscience votes are well suited to deciding issues of fundamental beliefs which are outside the left-and-right ideological split between Labor and the Liberal Party.
They can insulate MPs from special interests and allow them to vote in line with the wishes of their constituents on the merits of the case.
A federal conscience vote could help clear the roadblock which still blocks assisted dying legislation in the ACT and Northern Territory.
Debates on these very private and personal issues will always be hard but conscience votes are a good way of depoliticising them.
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