- LETTER FROM LIBERAL SENATOR, KAY PATTERSON (including speech) 21/07/06 -

EUTHANASIA LAWS BILL 1996: Second Reading

Tuesday, 20 March 2001

Senator PATTERSON (Victoria)(9.40 p.m.) —As there is a number of senators still to follow me, I will be reasonably brief in my comments. I have read all of the contributions to the debate in the House of Representatives, and I have listened to almost all of the contributions here in the Senate. If I have not listened to them, I have read them. I have followed those closely and I know that most of the arguments, if not all of them, have been canvassed over and over. So I will not go over them all. I hope that the brevity of my contribution will not be taken as an indication of the thought I have put into it.
Like many of my colleagues in both this place and the House of Representatives, I have not found the task of considering the Euthanasia Laws Bill an easy one. I have tried to approach it with an open mind. I have invited people to come and see me and have sought people out who I thought would have different opinions from mine and also different opinions from each other. I did that in order to examine the issue as widely as possible.
I have to admit that I have wavered in my decision. One reason for this is that the question before us is not a straightforward one. It is not a straightforward one which has to be made by any of us. It is not only about being pro-voluntary euthanasia or anti-voluntary euthanasia. It also involves a decision about overturning legislation made under another jurisdiction. I am not a constitutional lawyer, but the weight of evidence has convinced me that the Commonwealth does have the constitutional power, under section 122 of the constitution, to overturn the Northern Territory Rights of the Terminally Ill Act.
The overturning by the Commonwealth of legislation enacted by the Territory should, however, only be undertaken in exceptional circumstances. The question then is: does this constitute an exceptional circumstance which would warrant the activation of the constitutional provision?
The Northern Territory legislation, as it stands, is not restricted to Northern Territory residents alone. It potentially affects all Australians. Already two of the four people who have chosen assisted suicide have not been residents of the territory. The issue has been brought before the federal parliament by means of this bill. It is incumbent on me to do my best to evaluate the arguments, to form an opinion and to vote on the bill. Barry Jones said in his contribution in the lower house:
I have a moral obligation to vote . . . indeed, not to choose is to choose.
I agree with him on that.
Many in the debate who have been opposed to the Andrews bill have argued that it should be a matter of choice on the part of the individual, that no-one else should be able to deny another the opportunity to make a decision to end their life. It is a compelling argument and, many would argue, a compassionate one. But what may be seen as the most compassionate option may not be in the interests of the common good in the long run, nor is the view that to allow people to choose euthanasia the province of the compassionate alone. In 1939, Hitler said, `Incurably sick persons should be granted mercy death.' I think no-one here could defend him as a compassionate person.
I must admit that during my contemplation on my response to this bill, I identified with Keats when he said in his Ode to a Nightingale:
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with an easeful Death . . .
In fact most of us, if not all of us, despite our beliefs or religious convictions, if we were absolutely truthful, could say with Keats that, if we were suffering an incurable illness, we might be tempted to be `half in love with an easeful death'. Even the most resolute in their abhorrence of euthanasia may be tempted, as Bob Collins admitted tonight, to choose euthanasia as an option. I believe I am no less mortal.
If one were merely to respond on the basis of the plethora of the polls and surveys, one would be tempted to oppose the Andrews bill. Poll and survey after survey indicates general community support for euthanasia. But the closer one looks at these polls, the less certain one must surely be of basing a decision on them. An opinion piece in the New York Times by Daniel Yankelovich, chairman of a US public opinion and social trends research organisation, cautions us. He says:
There is an important lesson here about the strengths and limits of opinion polls. Most of them do accurately measure what people say. But only the most sophisticated measure what people really mean. Market researchers learned the lesson years ago; politicians and most of the media have not.
Why the disparity between what people say and what they mean? On complex issues like health care,—
I put in here euthanasia—
they haven't thought through all of the consequences of their opinions.
In the early stages of public debate on an issue, people typically hold conflicting opinions, with no real awareness that they are in conflict. (I call this "raw opinion.") As public debate progresses and people have the opportunity to consider alternatives and trade-offs, the compartments break down and people's views become more integrated and thoughtful.
With the right kind of public debate, raw opinion evolves into responsible public judgment. The disparity between what people say and what they mean disappears. Only then can the answers to opinion poll questions be taken literally.
I have made it my business since this bill was first introduced to ask people about their views on euthanasia. I have terrorised Comcar drivers, who look a little stunned first thing in the morning when they pick me up and I ask, `What do you think about it?' Taxi drivers, shopkeepers, doctors, nurses and other health professionals—even some in the press gallery—have been haunted by my questions and I have challenged them to answer.
It is very easy in the community to say on the one hand, `I think this' and, on the other hand, `I think that.' But on Monday night we actually have to make the decision to sit on one side or the other. I have challenged almost everyone I have come in contact with and I am sure most of those who are associated with me will be glad when this debate is over. The overwhelming majority, other than the health professionals, have said emphatically that they believe in voluntary euthanasia. However, their resolve has dissolved the more we have discussed the pros and cons. Maybe it is a case of their being half in love with an easeful death or the concept of an easeful death. Maybe, as the pollster has explained, they had not thought through all the consequences of their opinions.
Some of us in this debate have not been in a situation of having been closely involved with someone who is terminally ill. Others have and have chosen not to talk about it and others, as I have said, have not experienced it. I have had the privilege—I count it a privilege—of having been very closely associated, in fact sharing the last days of life, with two young friends, both of whom died: one from melanoma and the other from a chondro sarcoma.
I was therefore no stranger to death when I was confronted with my mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer two years ago. I will admit that I was devastated and, like Senator Newman, was fearful of what lay ahead for someone for whom I cared so much. Had voluntary euthanasia been an option, and had my mother chosen voluntary euthanasia, I am sure she would have discussed it with me. What I am not so sure of is what my response would have been. I will admit the anticipatory fear of what lay ahead was almost more than I could bear. Being my mother, she no doubt knew my fear as intimately as she knew her own.
Who is to say that, motivated by a perverse sort of altruism, she would not have chosen euthanasia? Or that I, in agreeing with her decision, would have been motivated as much by my own fears as by supporting her decision to end her pain. Terminal illness leaves both the sufferer and their families uniquely vulnerable. Relationships of trust and dependence are magnified so powerfully by uncertainty and fear of what lies ahead. In such a situation, stressed by the certainty of impending grief, loved ones, however well intended, may agree with a dying person's half-meant request for euthanasia as a means of assuaging their own fear. The dying, hearing their loved one's agreement, may form a real intent not present before.
My mother's death was not an easy one. In fact, it most probably would have been described by Senator Eggleston as a hard one—at home in a country town and with me, a fairly inadequate nurse, which she identified at one point and said, `I'm glad you didn't do nursing.' I asked her why and she said, `You're rather bad at it. But I wouldn't change you for the world.' As I said, it was a bumpy ride, mixed with sorrow and joy. The community nurses and her doctor, himself terminally ill, relieved her suffering to the best of their ability.
In the grief of my loss, I did not have to ponder the particular concern or guilt of my mother having made a decision based more on my needs than her own. The complex and tangled nature of love can lead just as surely to someone choosing voluntary euthanasia as a decision influenced by the motives of greed and personal benefit of those associated with a dying person.
Another concern I have is the pressure of a doctor suggesting euthanasia to a patient as an option. How many fearful patients may read into the doctor's suggestion that he or she anticipates that their dying will be insufferable or that the doctor has given up hope on them? Nor am I convinced that the interaction between the dying patient would not be influenced by the doctor's own difficulty with supporting and caring for a patient who is terminally ill. Doubts are also cast upon the ability of doctors—even three of them in the Northern Territory case—to decide if someone, especially a patient with whom they have had very little, if any, contact, is depressed. Nor are medical practitioners infallible.
All of us most probably have examples of people in the last stages of their life—in fact even some with whom I have spoken—who have been in palliative care, people whom we would assume, and the doctors have assumed, are dying. They then, for sometimes inexplicable reasons, apparently defy their prognosis and, through spontaneous remission or through intervention of a new and untried therapy, live.
I have other concerns with the Northern Territory legislation but time does not permit me to address them all. In a perfect world, one may be able to devise a law that is free of the possibility of abuse. If that were the case, even if one were personally opposed to the law on moral or religious grounds, I believe it would be difficult to argue that others should not be free to choose to die when they believed that the pain and suffering of their terminal illness was unbearable. But we do not live in a perfect world, given the emotions of the dying person and the emotions and motives of those closely associated with them. Some, and maybe many, may not be in a position to make a free and competent decision that is not the subject of overt or covert pressures.
Individual rights do not exist in a vacuum. The integrity of individual rights is wholly dependent upon the nature of the society that begets them. The nation which would allow the vulnerable to be placed at risk for the pursuit of self-determination by others is not a society, I believe, which can call itself a `free society'. A free society curtails individual rights for the common good. It pursues the greatest possible freedom for the greatest possible number of people.
The right to self-determination, presupposed by the concept of voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide, must be balanced against the right of the sick and vulnerable to receive the protection of a just society. If we sacrifice the former, people will continue to suffer, and I acknowledge that with great sorrow. But if we sacrifice the latter, some—more likely the weak and vulnerable—may die against their will. Therefore I will be voting to support the Euthanasia Laws Bill 1996.

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