Politicians need to catch up on euthanasia debate

Euthanasia is an issue on which most people have thought long and hard and made up their minds. But instead of just getting on with it we’re getting another inquiry, writes Terry Sweetman.

If the Queensland parliament was truly representative of the people, we would have voluntary euthanasia on the next sitting day.

According to surveys, anything up to 80 per cent of Queenslanders support assisted dying but our politicians walk around it like they would an angry taipan.

It is extraordinary that the very people whose next entitlement depends on currying favour with the electorate would ignore its expressed will. However, the fact is the parliament is neither physically, ideologically nor spiritually entirely representative of the people. This is because, despite the monetary rewards and fame, parliamentary service is a calling that most of us would avoid like root canal surgery and, our parliamentarians are generally more religious than the general public, although their behaviour rarely seems to reflect such piety.

Most of the studies of the religiosity of our MPs have focused on the federal parliament but I suspect they are relevant to the state houses.

They show that while religious faith is generally declining in Australia, it is becoming stronger and more overt in the federal parliament.

Put it this way, my working day never began with prayers and any religiously inclined colleagues didn’t feel the need to bend my ear, invite me to prayer meetings or selectively promote their faith mates.

According to surveys, anything up to 80 per cent of Queenslanders support assisted dying. Picture: supplied

In Queensland, the Liberal National Party is sometimes charged with being an infestation of fundamentalist happy clappers and Labor has its share of staunch knee benders.

Some of our MPs have been loud in their religiosity and some have been flagrant in their hypocrisy. I’m thinking here of Joh the less than blessed, and calling out convicted child rapist and notorious bible banger Keith Wright.

So, religious beliefs and instruction probably weigh heavily on those contemplating the legalisation of voluntary assisted dying.

But the less than pious in the parliament are more concerned with the here and now than the hereafter. They are terrified of any electoral pain they might suffer if they offend a strategically placed minority.

If you’re sitting on a low, single-figure margin you don’t lightly poke a potential voter in the eye.

This skittishness is why we are embarking on a unnecessarily 12-month inquiry into the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia in Queensland.

Queensland is about to embark on a 12-month-long inquiry into euthanasia. Picture: supplied

It was announced by Premier Anastasia Palaszczuk in the form of an omnibus inquiry into the delivery of aged care, palliative care and what is coyly called the end of life.

To my mind this is a bus with one too many wheels.

We certainly need to look at aged care and to examine the efficacy of palliative care, which will be the default choice of most in their final days.

However, VAD is a stand-alone issue on which most people have thought long and hard and made up their minds.

They have examples from around the world and, most recently, in Victoria which last year bit the legislative bullet on assisted dying.

Putting rump steak on the menu at aged care homes and ramping up the morphine in palliative care is not going to silence my demand to be allowed to choose the time and the means of my own death.

This is something I’ve considered for many years and concluded that I am entitled to the one final expression of free choice.

As I grow older I am even more determined that, legally or illegally, I will exercise that freedom if I am physically capable.

The drug Nembutal puts a patient to sleep within four minutes of being taken, and then peacefully kills them within 20 minutes. Picture: supplied

I might need some help but it should not be at the price of subjecting a loved one to prosecution under law.

In my dabblings with Dying With Dignity I have come across many who have equipped themselves with the means to end their days but they should be able to seek the certainty of professional assistance.

I have made up my mind, as have thousands of others, including those who would choose to let fate take its course.

Why cannot our politicians have the same strength to declare their hands on an issue on which they must surely have given equal thought?

Instead we are going to have a public debate that could be as vicious, as spiteful and as divisive as that to which we were subjected to on same sex marriage.

For the same cowardly reasons

Then we will have to suffer the hand wringing over conscience votes which, in the LNP at least, seem to be anything but conscience driven.

But every day our politicians delay the inevitable some poor bugger will suffer the pain of the ultimate denial of human choice and dignity.

Get on with it.

Terry Sweetman is a Courier-Mail columnist.

@Terrytoo69