“The test for access to voluntary assisted dying ought to be simply ‘intolerable and untreatable pain or suffering’. It ought to require verification by just two medical practitioners,” writes political columnist MICHAEL MOORE.

THERE is an opportunity for the ACT Legislative Assembly to lead on voluntary assisted dying. 

The ACT was the first jurisdiction in Australia to consider this type of legislation but, thanks to the federal government, it will be amongst the last to implement. 

The ACT now has the opportunity to learn from all the other jurisdictions and avoid any of their pitfalls. As each of the states has considered this sort of legislation, the nature of the political challenges means those legislatures have invariably favoured particularly conservative models.

The test for access to voluntary assisted dying (VAD) ought to be simply “intolerable and untreatable pain or suffering”. Currently legislation in other jurisdictions asks doctors to predict the likely length of life of a person wishing to participate in voluntary active dying. This is an entirely arbitrary process laden with pitfalls. It ought to require verification by just two medical practitioners.

Dr David Morawetz, a director of Australia21, pointed out in a recent meeting that “more than 200 million people are living in jurisdictions where VAD laws have been passed, including Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada, Spain, Colombia, NZ, many states of the US and all six states of Australia”. 

He argued that the ACT could learn from this experience. In February the ACT released a discussion paper with the intention of understanding “how to design a safe, effective, and accessible process for an eligible person to choose to access voluntary assisted dying in the ACT”. 

The discussion paper points out that all legislation in the ACT must be considered for human rights compatibility. The paper argues “voluntary assisted dying raises complex human rights considerations including the right to life, the right to privacy and autonomy, the right to equality and non-discrimination and the right to freedom of religion and personal beliefs”. These are all important questions.

The Minister for Human Rights is Tara Cheyne. She has called upon Canberrans to use the discussion paper to “think about key issues”, and “tell us about anything else you think we should consider”. She asked Canberrans to engage with the government through the voluntary assisted dying YourSay website.

In the light of this invitation, emeritus professor Bob Douglas, a founder of Australia21, convened a roundtable meeting of people with extensive understanding of the moral and practical issues regarding the best possible VAD legislation in Australia.

Prof Douglas argued: “While I recognise the absolute need to guard against ‘the slippery slope’ and the potential abuse of assisted dying by someone who could stand to gain from a death, I consider that the issue has become over-bureaucratised and over-constrained in the models operating in Australia at present”.

He raised the possibility of allowing advanced care directives to be applied to voluntary assisted dying. The circumstances could apply where “a person of certifiably sane mind could indicate their wish for assisted death in the event of them developing dementia or profound mental illness”.

This seems eminently sensible to me. As with all advanced care directives, there would also need to be a designated person, nominated as their agent, who could initiate the intervention in order to verify that this remained the genuine intent of the person who had originally made the plan.

Conservative approaches in other jurisdictions have injected into legislation concepts such as “predicted life left”, “cooling-off periods” and “progressive or incurable disease”. These are redundant. When someone seeks to end their own life because of great pain or suffering, they can be assessed by two appropriate medical practitioners and consent given.

With appropriate medical leadership available, the concept put forward by Dying with Dignity ACT of a centralised voluntary assisted dying support unit also has merit. The size of our jurisdiction and general access across Canberra makes such a proposal particularly suitable to our jurisdiction.

Although there are others, the main advances in legislation in the ACT ought to include: 

• leaving out any need for prediction of time frames for death; 
• allowing advanced directives for assisted dying; 
• allowing “intolerable and untreatable pain or suffering” as the test for access, to be verified by just two medical practitioners; and 
• establishing a centralised voluntary assisted dying unit.