Forget expense accounts. Politicians need to talk about voluntary euthanasia

While politicians are up to their necks trying to out-stupid each other about their expense accounts, the population is clearly interested in actual Big Issues.

Paying Tribute. Coffin. Funeral. Generic image.

Sellouts at Sydney’s Town Hall are rare, let alone a talkfest that promised two hours of death.

Yet here we were, 2000 of us, crammed into the town hall, with hundreds having queued up outside hours before doors were opened, in order to get a good seat.

To see whom, you might well ask. To see a debate between the Archbishop of Sydney, Anthony Fisher and bio ethicist Prof Peter Singer. And the topic?

Should voluntary euthanasia be legalised?

While politicians are up to their necks trying to out-stupid each other about their expense accounts, the population is clearly interested in actual Big Issues.

A studio audience was recently surveyed to find out what they think are the top ten most important issues in the world. The top two were life and death. The issue of politicians’ expense accounts wouldn’t even make the board.

The gathered crowd was a complete demographic mishmash. University students were well represented (against the archetype profile of self-centred leftists know-it-alls, these guys and gals were after answers to big questions). There were those in suits, those in habits, those in designer duds and even middle class mums like me, in sensible cardigans and specs, but I might add I was flanked by two adult sons.

Yet the debate was oddly unsatisfying, even hough I felt the debate was clearly won by the bioethicist Peter Singer and the affirmative argument. His Grace the Archbishop seemed to drift off topic — unable to come to grips (it seemed) with the basic question — why shouldn’t an adult be able to assert their autonomy in relation to their own demise? Why is a wretched life, full of pain with only greater pain in its future be, in the words of the Archbishop “still intrinsically valuable”, and therefore (by extension) not the property of the owner of said life.

The audience-mind as one questioned, valuable to whom?

When pushed to examine the meaning behind his choice of the word “intrinsic”, the Archbishop drifted off tangentially to a place where I no longer recognised his train of thought as even human.

In the end, our little gang of three went home, all on the same page that a person has a right to their own skin, their own heartbeat, their own vitality. And their own death. It is OURS. Even if one was religiously minded, and believes God gave us life, well, it was given to us. No strings were attached.

In a world where rules and regulations pile one atop the other at a stupefying rate, surely we, as humans, have individual and exclusive right to the most vital of decisions; when it’s time to die.

Now there’s a debate our navel gazing pollies will never have the balls to enter.

More’s the pity.

Originally published as Forget expense accounts. Politicians need to talk about voluntary euthanasia