Battling rare eye cancer, Gavin Perry calls for voluntary assisted dying to return to the Northern Territory
Darwin man Gavin Perry knows that growing old, and dying, is not easy. He says having choices at the end of his life would make facing the future less daunting.
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Darwin retiree Gavin Perry knows that growing old, and dying, is not easy.
Last year, the 74-year-old suffered a brain haemorrhage, and about three months ago he woke up blind in one eye – the first symptom of what would later be diagnosed as a rare form of malignant ocular cancer.
Mr Perry is in Adelaide this week for treatment, spending days in an isolation ward with radioactive pellets sewn into his right eyeball, nuking his sight and, hopefully, the tumour.
His prognosis is uncertain, and he would feel better facing the future if voluntary assisted dying (VAD) was an option in the Northern Territory.
“You know, I’m not afraid of dying,” Mr Perry told the NT News earlier this month.
“But I’m still stressed that I don’t know what’s going to happen to me.
“It’s when your luck runs out that you need the help that is being offered with VAD.
“They told me I’d go blind and die a horrible death … if I’m lucky again, I can survive, but then what about the next thing, and the next thing?
“When you get old and you’re faced with these things, you start thinking about your life and your death.”
Mr Perry wears makeshift glasses to keep the light out of his bad eye as he overlooks the well-kept tropical garden at his Ludmilla home, a sign of his decades working as a landscape gardener in the Top End.
For the most part, he is animated and matter-of-fact when he talks about VAD and his own health issues, only becoming emotional when recounting one of his best friends’ death in palliative care.
“It took 10 days of listening to him struggling to die, a struggling death rattle,” Mr Perry says.
“Death is the most emotional moment – deeply, profoundly emotional – you can’t imagine anything greater.
“Voluntary assisted dying, it’s about love, compassion, humility. How can it be a crime to help someone at that moment? How can that be against the law? It’s nuts; doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s got to change.”
Originally from the UK, Mr Perry travelled to Darwin 52 years ago and never left.
He remembers listening to the wireless as the NT became the first place in the world to legalise voluntary euthanasia, under the CLP Perron government in 1995.
“Darwin felt like a really progressive city, full of opportunity and optimism – I thought, this is the Territory, let’s go!” Mr Perry said.
That feeling was short-lived; Perron’s Rights of the Terminally Ill Act lasted a year before being overturned by the commonwealth in a push led by Howard government backbencher Kevin Andrews.
The rights for territories to legislate for euthanasia was not restored until 2022, and now the NT is the only jurisdiction across Australia and New Zealand without VAD laws.
Last year an independent expert advisory panel released a government-commissioned report into developing a framework for VAD in the NT.
The report found 73 per cent of Territorians believed a person should be able to choose when they die, and recommended the NT introduce VAD laws broadly consistent with those in other states.
This week independent crossbencher Justine Davis introduced a motion to parliament calling for that report to be recognised, and for bipartisan support to develop a VAD Bill.
The CLP, in its first sign of movement on the issue since taking government, pre-empted the motion and ordered a parliamentary inquiry into VAD – effectively stalling the debate until October.
Having the CLP on board will be crucial for any legislative progress as the team that drafts laws has said it will not develop such a complex and resource-intensive project unless directed by the government.
Ms Davis is taking the new inquiry as a win, as the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee has been instructed to prepare guidelines for creating VAD laws if it recommends adopting the practice in the NT.
“There are a range of views among MLAs, but it’s really important that we to talk to our electorates and represent their views,” Ms Davis said.
“It’s pretty clear from the work that’s being done that there is overwhelming support from the public.
“I’ve talked to many people across the political spectrum who say this is a really important piece of legislation.”
None of the CLP’s 17 members rose to speak on the issue.
Council of the Aging NT expressed concerns another inquiry signalled the CLP was not serious about adopting VAD legislation.
“It appears the wheel is being reinvented with a committee made up of politicians asked to duplicate the work already completed by an expert panel with backgrounds in social justice, law, medicine, psychiatry and palliative medicine,” chief executive Sue Shearer said.
Mr Perry is cautiously optimistic about the inquiry, but wants to see action now.
“If this present Chief Minister and the Cabinet put their heads in the sand and don’t let this law pass by saying it’s not important, or it’s not their priority, then they are gutless,” he says.
“I’d like to ask Lia Finocchiaro to tell us, does she support it or not? And if she supports it, why not do it now? What are you waiting for? In the meantime, all these people are suffering.”
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