More nonsense from the panel that will design Daniel Andrews' death law

The trouble for Owler is that Nitschke and the other medical practitioners involved in the short lived NT experiment did understand the law and 'how it works'. We cannot say that they deliberately tried to get around the 'hurdles' (they may have - but we simply don't know). It may have been the patients themselves who obfuscated as one most certainly did. Breached they most certainly were.

Other than educating doctors to make sure that the doses are lethal, everything else is (or should be) a step-by-step process. The NT law was very clear and yet still problems were noted. The Canadian experience (also in its infancy) shows similar and perhaps even more disturbing anomalies appearing in their statistics.

Owler is correct to note that the issue is really between autonomy and the protection of citizens from harm. He is on shaky ground, however, when he claims that a balance can be reached that would allow people to suicide with medical assistance on the one hand while protecting people at the same time.

If the NT experience is properly understood, it tells us that no amount of safeguards will ever make any law safe from abuse. The appeal to autonomy loses its legitimacy at the very point where another person's rights are infringed and where society's ability to protect its own are compromised. That unsafe space existed for nine months in the Top End; it should never be allowed to happen again.