Supporters of a Voluntary Assisted Dying bill during a candle light rally (Image: AAP/Kelly Barne)

They don’t make politicians like they used to.

That might be the lament of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church which has consistently led opposition to voluntary assisted dying (VAD) laws. This week it confronts the likelihood that Queensland will pass VAD legislation, the fifth Australian state to do so.

The rot set in in 2017 when the Andrews government in Victoria passed the first legislation since the Northern Territory passed laws in 1995. The NT’s laws were quashed soon afterwards when the Howard government passed a bill overriding the territory’s rights.

Over the intervening 22 years states made close to 50 failed attempts — but it was always the same story: parliamentarians were convinced voluntary assisted dying laws were electoral poison, despite surveys always showing majority support in the electorate building to between 80% and 85% in recent years, including among lay Catholics.

But the church claims special ownership of the end of life and its hierarchy has pulled every lever to ensure it stays that way. Fear campaigns? No one does them better: VAD was “state-sanctioned killing”, or “death on demand” or “the thin end of the wedge” to the dreaded “slippery slope” where ageing mothers would be forced to be euthanised by “unscrupulous families” who couldn’t wait to get their hands on the family home. And what next? Killing the disabled?  

But then something extraordinary happened. Amid dire warnings the Andrews government proceeded oh so carefully with legislation. It had to be done 12 months before an election to minimise the risk. 

And when the laws passed there was no backlash at the ballot box. On the contrary, the Andrews government was returned with an increased majority.

The result suggested VAD laws were, in fact, an electoral plus, so much so that Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was more than happy to campaign on them at the state election last year.

A very interested observer

One interested observer as the debate unwinds in the Queensland Parliament will be the former chief minister of the Northern Territory, Marshall Perron. His government was the first in the world to pass VAD legislation. He has, in one way or another, been part of every attempt since then to introduce a law. Now living in Queensland, Perron will be ducking down to Brisbane to witness the next step in person.

Perron has done the numbers and he’s fairly confident the bill will get up.

“It looks like Labor will vote pretty much en masse,” he said. “There is also support among the Liberals. The Katter group will be against it.” (Labor has 54 seats, the LNP 34, One Nation one, the Greens two, and the Katters three. The vote is a conscience vote.) 

Back in the 1990s Perron’s legislation was opposed by right-to-lifers, by the Northern Territory branch of the Australian Medical Association and others. But the killer blow was struck by two prominent Catholic politicians: Kevin Andrews for the Liberals and Tony Burke for the ALP. Burke was was allied with the conservative Shop Distributive and Allied employees union but says his reason was personal rather than religious. Andrews and Burke rounded up the votes for the Commonwealth legislation that killed Perron’s work.

But Perron believes the church’s power is diminished: “The royal commission into child sex abuse did major damage to the moral standing and the credibility of the church.”

A parallel story

There’s a parallel story to the ultimate success of the VAD movement, known in most states as “Dying with Dignity”. It finally landed on a form of legislation which parliamentarians could back: a conservative model with a large number of safeguards. 

In this model, a person with a terminal illness would need to have12 months to live, as attested by two doctors. One of the doctors might need to be a specialist in the person’s illness. There might need to be at least one request given in writing. The person would need to self-administer the drug (Nembutal) which would kill them. 

Not everyone in the movement agreed with the compromises which they considered made it impossible to address the horrendous suffering of those who do not necessarily have a terminal illness. The problem is that even politicians who supported VAD could not back the much wider VAD parameters used in countries like Netherlands and Belgium.

The VAD story is ultimately a testament to the power of facts and rational argument. It is among the most complex of issues, where medicine, ethics, religion and the law meet. It is designed for the individual but it reflects on the broader society. 

Previous debates have seen politicians at their worst and their best. There are party heavies who lean on individuals who are out of step with the party leadership. Preselections can be threatened. Committee positions offered and rescinded. But at its best it’s also about politicians who genuinely wrestle with the life and death issues at stake.

For some it is intensely personal. Former Victorian health minister Jill Hennessy, who shepherded Victoria’s legislation through the two houses of Parliament, had a mother suffering from MS and a father dying of cancer. Premier Daniel Andrews, a Catholic, didn’t publicly support the bill until after his own father died.

A powerful speech

Victorian upper house MP Harriet Shing spoke about her brother Patrick — who had been diagnosed with prostate cancer — so powerfully it is worth quoting at length:

“He went so quickly from running marathons, from practising as a lawyer and from writing, in a sweet coincidence, a pre-doctoral essay for Oxford on free will and self-determination. He went from being one of the smartest, most assertive and most philosophical and ethical minds that you could ever meet, an active participant, a man whose road racing records still stand in the outer eastern suburbs to someone whose body was ravaged.

“Prostate cancer loves bone — it loves bone in the way that fire loves kindling — and it eats it. My brother was eaten by this cancer. It came up his legs. It removed his ability to move. He became bedridden. It made its way up his spine, into his neck and around his skull.

“As my brother lay dying with his useless legs and his view out to Princess Park, we provided him with everything that we possibly could, knowing that that was not enough. 

“I cannot think of how I would want to die in a situation akin to my brother’s. I cannot because I do not know the nature of the intolerable suffering that he had, and I cannot because the nature of intolerable suffering is so subjective. I used to hear him weeping at night in his room when he thought that I could not hear. In grief and in loss and in sadness, he watched his body decline and he felt the loss of words that usually came so easily and so beautifully to his tongue — he felt them disappear.

“And on 18 December 2015, on a blazing hot day, he died just after 10 o’clock in the morning. And then after the shock of us walking right to the edge of that end of life in the same way that so many do at the beginning of life in a birthing suite amidst that mess and that chaos, we sat in shock, wondering what to do next. I remember thinking that for a 42-year-old man he looked so much like the little baby that he had once been, and at last his face that I had gauged for pain signals for so long was unlined.”

Shing voted for Victoria’s assisted dying bill and it narrowly passed the upper house and became law.

Church will oppose VAD every step of the way

The Queensland Parliament has 93 members, each of whom will go through the process of calculating life, death and pain this week. 

The Catholic Church hierarchy will oppose a law every step of the way. It is seeking special exemptions for its institutions and its doctors (early indications are that the government will not agree to all of these). It will assert that palliative care and its accompanying death by morphine — known as terminal sedation — is the kind way to go.

The church will argue that dying as a consequence of pain relief is ethical because morphine was administered to ease pain rather than to cause death. This is known as the doctrine of double effect, as propounded by St Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. The problem is, it leaves all power with the doctor rather than the dying person.

New South Wales is next. The Vatican’s last stand? Perhaps.

How do you feel about voluntary assisted dying? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name if you would like to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say column. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.

David Hardaker worked with the Go Gentle VAD advocacy team before the Victorian vote in 2017.