Courageous MP Speaks Out Against Euthanasia

Mr Julian Leeser MP (Berowra), 2 August, 2022: This is not the first time I’ve risen in this place to speak on this matter. Every few years, the old arguments are dusted off and freshened up and someone wants to raise the flag on this issue or thinks the numbers might finally be in their favour to turn the tables. In the last parliament I said that I rose with a heavy heart; today the weight is doubled. I’m sad that we are fighting what I sense will be a losing battle. I think that, in time, we will look upon this as a huge mistake, but even if the Restoring Territory Rights Bill 2022 is passed I will not regret standing here today and being counted. There are times in your life when doing so is important, and today for me is absolutely one of those days. I’m standing to speak about something that I know, at the very core of my being, is wrong. We’ve seen in the past that where this goes is monstrous. Nothing about what we’re doing today is enlightened or compassionate, even though the proponents’ intention may be to do so. As we rip apart these laws, what we are doing is ripping apart the values our society has stood for.

I want to directly address the argument that’s been made by the mover of this bill, the member for Solomon. He’s argued that this is just about territory rights and not about euthanasia. I have great respect for the member for Solomon, but I could not disagree with him more. This bill endorses no other right than the right to kill his fellow Territorians. We hear a lot about territory rights. Well, I can’t think of any political movement in history that has asked for rights and freedoms in order to kill people. This is a perversion of what liberty is about, and we should be deeply troubled by the idea that we are crossing this line. Let me be clear: this bill deals with only one right, and that is the right to pass euthanasia laws in the territories.

As the shadow minister for Indigenous Australians, I’m particularly concerned about the implications of euthanasia for Indigenous people. Indigenous Australians facing high rates of disease are particularly vulnerable to euthanasia legislation, and the Northern Territory government cannot be trusted to manage the introduction of something like euthanasia in a way that will have anything near the necessary safeguards. We’ve seen that the Territory government, at the end of the Stronger Futures legislation, has been completely incapable of managing alcohol restrictions in communities, and the consequences have been devastating. Instead of creating a situation in which restrictions were in place unless opted out of, the Territory removed restrictions automatically. The Northern Territory government’s failures are causing massive increases in domestic and sexual violence and hospital admissions. Given the record of the Northern Territory government, how can we expect that something like the introduction of euthanasia will be properly managed, with adequate safeguards, and will not have devastating consequences in these places?

Euthanasia also runs counter to the values and beliefs of many Indigenous Australians. Many Aboriginal leaders have been clear that euthanasia is fundamentally at odds with their culture. In 1996, the introduction of the Northern Territory euthanasia laws was met with strong opposition from Indigenous people. As Dr Djiniyini Gondarra OAM told the Senate committee at the time:

“It does not fit into our customary law. It seems to be seen as a form of sorcery, that you are doing something to somebody else. You cannot create a law within a parliament to take somebody else’s life.”

In 1996 Chips Mackinolty was commissioned by the Northern Territory government’s Aboriginal steering committee to go to Aboriginal communities and to record people’s views on the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act to feed back to government. Twenty-one community meetings were conducted across the Territory, with about 900 people participating. The results were virtually unanimous. Only two participants expressed support for the legislation, and at every single meeting people were strongly opposed to the legislation.

In my view, no parliament in Australia should have euthanasia on its statute books, and yet since 2017 every state has passed legislation to make euthanasia lawful. Euthanasia laws in Australia are young, but they’re already leaving a significant mark. In Victoria, 331 people died in the first two years following the introduction of the law. Advocates there predicted there would only be 12 people a year when the law first came in. In Western Australia, 171 people were euthanased between the commencement of their law, in 2019, and May 2022. In the latest report from Victoria, covering the period January to June 2021, the youngest applicant for euthanasia was 18—eighteen! Every other state has now legalised euthanasia and is waiting for that law to come into effect. In a few short years our definition of what makes life meaningful and our understanding of the value of life have been quietly and significantly altered.

One of the catchcries of modern politics is that we should listen to the experts. Why are the same people who chant that mantra, ignoring the Australian Medical Association, which continues to oppose such laws? Very soon it will be normal for Australians to consider the idea that they might end their own life. With this law, we are fundamentally changing the relationship that people have with government and the compact that we have with one another. There is never a time in which a person’s life is expendable. The consequences are broader than we would like to believe them to be.

Today in the Netherlands euthanasia is available to children and to people with dementia or mental illness, rather than just physical disabilities.  In Canada, within five years the categories of people accessing euthanasia expanded to include people with disabilities even though they don’t have a fatal condition. How can we tolerate the idea that a disabled person’s life should not be defended with as much fervour as that of an able-bodied person? As Dr John Fox, a disability advocate in New Zealand, argued during that country’s recent euthanasia debate, why is it that a 25-year-old fit and healthy rugby player goes to a doctor and says he wants to end his life and is referred to all sorts of services to help him find meaning and hope again, but if a 25-year-old disabled man goes to a doctor and says he wants to end his life, he’s offered help to do so?

I cannot forget what the most civilised and enlightened society in Europe—which wiped out six million of my people in the Holocaust—began their program of industrial murder by euthanising vulnerable disable people who were thought to be in pain. I cannot in good conscience know this history and say nothing. The law impacts who we are and what our culture looks like going forward. It operates as a standard setter and as a teacher, and this law endorses a cultural change that I hoped we would never see. I want to finish with the words of Dylan Thomas that I quoted last time I spoke on these issues in this place. It’s galling to me that the proponents of euthanasia have called their organisation Go Gentle to make their case. They’re turning on its head, in my view, all that Thomas was saying in his famous poem. Indeed, I think we should rage for life. We must rage for life. As Dylan Thomas wrote: “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Parliament Of Australia - House Of Representatives
Restoring Territory Rights Bill 2022 (Excerpts)
For full speech go to bit.ly/3RgmdHK