Why voluntary euthanasia was doomed to fail: former chief minister

The architect of Australia's first short-lived move to legalise voluntary euthanasia has explained why he thinks the scheme failed.

Marshall Perron, a former Northern Territory chief minister, oversaw the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia, which came into effect in the territory in 1996.

Four people died via legal euthanasia before the NT's laws were overridden by the Commonwealth in 1997.

Mr Perron, who became a vocal advocate for the national euthanasia movement following the ban, said one NT resident and three people from interstate used the laws to die.

"If I made a mistake, it was probably not putting a residential requirement in the legislation," he said.

"It seemed to me wrong somehow that if someone had been visiting the territory and took ill in some way and was in a bed with the same conditions as a Territorian, one entitled to voluntary euthanasia ... and the person in the bed next to them not.

Former Northern Territory chief minister Marshall Perron says people are dying slow deaths from "terminal sedation".Credit: Brendan Esposito

"If the basis of this legislation is compassion, then it should apply to anyone who is in the Northern Territory.

"I think that fact probably aggravated opponents in Canberra more than anything, it was stated that you have legislated for the whole of Australia.

"Well, I suppose you could have said we'd legislated for the whole of the world because we weren't stopping Japanese tourists from taking ill in the Northern Territory, either.

"However, that may well have made the difference between the legislation surviving or not, because it was only lost in the Senate by two votes, two or three votes."

Mr Perron said he was inundated with letters and calls from across Australia in the 1990s from people desperate to tell their stories.

"People who in the worst cases had actually killed a parent, responding to the suffering to a point they couldn't stand it any more," he said.

Mr Perron spoke before a Queensland inquiry examining aged care, end-of-life issues, palliative care and voluntary assisted dying.

He told the inquiry there were hundreds of people across Queensland who were "preparing for their demise at their own hand because it's taken so long for politicians to act" to legalise euthanasia.

But he said the palliative care response to pain and suffering was "terminal sedation".

"We advocates of law reform claim it would be more humane to assist a patient with unbearable, un-relievable suffering (upon request) by the administration of drugs that cause death in minutes rather than starving to death over several days or weeks."