Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk under pressure to act on euthanasia laws

A new poll shows more than 80 per cent of Queenslanders want the Palaszczuk Government to deal with voluntary assisted dying laws as a matter of urgency.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, ALP Queensland State Conference, Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, South Brisbane. Picture: Liam Kidston

PRESSURE is mounting on Annastacia Palaszczuk to act on euthanasia laws before next year’s State Election.

The Sunday Mail can reveal new polling conducted by the Clem Jones Trust shows more than 80 per cent of Queenslanders want the Palaszczuk Government to deal with voluntary assisted dying laws as a matter of urgency.

More than three quarters of those polled – 77 per cent – called for the legislation to be brought before October next year should the historic parliamentary inquiry now under way into end-of-life care recommend them.

The polling also found support for voluntary assisted dying laws for the terminally ill remained high, with 82 per cent of those polled indicating they either strongly supported or supported such laws.

The results come just days after the Government moved to delay the Parliamentary Health Committee’s report and other end-of-life issues until next March, pushing it closer to the next election.

Clem Jones Trust chair David Muir called on Ms Palaszczuk to commit to legalising voluntary assisted dying for the terminally ill before the election when she gave her keynote address to the party faithful at Labor’s State Conference yesterday.

He said any delays would be a “betrayal of the thousands of Queenslanders who have flooded the Health Committee’s inquiry with pleas for voluntary assisted dying laws”.

Members of Labor’s Left faction were also pushing for a deadline to ensure the laws did not get pushed out past polling day, with a motion mottled ahead of the state conference this weekend.

“These latest poll results should spur the government into acting on any recommendation for new laws so they can be drafted, debated, and hopefully passed in a conscience vote by the state’s 93 MPs before the October 2020 election,” Mr Muir said.

“Recommendations on voluntary assisted dying laws by the current cross-party inquiry of the Queensland parliament need to be dealt with before the next election to ensure the issue does not become a political football in a partisan campaign.

“The current inquiry was established by the current state parliament, it will report to the current parliament, so Queenslanders rightly expect the 93 MPs they elected to the current parliament to deal with this issue and not let it become a political pointscoring exercise in an election campaign.”

Mr Muir said urgent action was also needed because the laws pass would likely take 18 months to take effect.

“That means there is no time to lose, especially when you consider that each week a terminally ill person is likely to be taking their own life in often horrific and always lonely circumstances because they see no other way of relieving or avoiding suffering,” he said.