Gillard's conflict on euthanasia more than justified

Prime Minister Julia Gillard is right to be conflicted about changing the law so that killing a patient becomes an alternative to palliative care.

"Intellectually, you would say, people should be able to make their own decisions," she said this week.

"But I find it very hard to conceptualise the sort of safeguards that we would need if we did say that euthanasia was legal. So I am conflicted on it in that sense."

The last time there was a public discussion about what "safeguards" might be embedded in a euthanasia bill was last August when Australia's leading euthanasia activist, Dr Phillip Nitschke, fronted a parliamentary inquiry in Tasmania where, you guessed it, the Greens were pushing euthanasia.

Nitschke's testimony ( pages 100-115) should be required reading for every politician considering their vote in the upcoming Federal Parliamentary debate on Greens Leader Bob Brown's euthanasia bill.

Quizzed on long-standing concerns over whether he broke the law in the mid 1990s by euthanising patients who were not terminally ill, fudging a required psychiatric assessment and failing to have a specialist with the required qualifications assess a patient, Nitschke was breathtakingly brazen.

He freely admitted under oath that he probably breached the law by failing to have a proper psychiatric examination conducted on an unnamed socially isolated man whom he euthanised in his musty Darwin house.

"So maybe it was a breach but it was a breach that was motivated, I would say, by compassion," Nitschke told the Tasmanian Parliament.

The arrogance in this statement resonates strongly with that of other madmen in history who have presumed to play God with other people's lives.

In regard to the other allegations, he denies breaching the short-lived Northern Territory Rights of the Terminally Ill (ROTI) Act, but does not dispute that patients he euthanised were not terminally ill. There are also concerns that the Act was not followed when an orthopaedic surgeon assessed a patient for euthanasia who was suffering from a skin disease.

With no sense of irony, Nitschke tells Tasmanian politicians that he does not agree with the safeguard of having psychiatric assessments (p.112) and that doctors should not be the ones to give final sign off on whether someone should be euthanised (p.108).

From Nitschke's testimony it is clear he wants to make euthanasia the choice of the individual and no one else despite the consequences that such a radical change to our society's compact on the worth of human life might have on others.

This perhaps explains why when asked about his most controversial view of all - that the "peaceful pill" should be made available to anyone including troubled teenagers - Nitschke did not back away.

"That is what I said, basically, that rational adults have a right to a peaceful death. It turns out that you can be an adult or a teenager and it turns out that you can be rational and troubled." (p.114)

The Tasmanian politicians quizzing Nitschke last August have unmasked the real agenda of euthanasia fundamentalists such as Nitschke and Bob Brown and it goes way beyond the "rights of the terminally ill".

It is about legislatively institutionalising assisted suicide - no questions asked - as a way of escape from ones' troubles. As we've seen in the Netherlands it can also lead to vulnerable people being euthanised without their consent.

Having failed to convince politicians in four Australian State Parliaments over the past two years, Nitschke and Brown want to change the law because they have more chance of manipulating the outcomes in the smaller single chamber Territory assemblies. Let's face it, you only need to con nine people in the ACT Assembly to get a majority and 22 million Australians are at risk.

This is a dangerous agenda and Julia Gillard is right to be cautious.