‘Gives everyone in NSW a choice’: the long road to assisted dying laws

Scott Riddle was a seemingly healthy 35-year-old when his world was turned upside down. Suddenly, with a stage four bowel cancer diagnosis, the father of three had to start planning to die.

He recorded videos for his children, updated his will and wrote a manual for his wife, with all the details of everyday life that she may need to know if he was no longer around.

Scott Riddle, who has stage four bowel cancer, says everyone in NSW should feel relief after assisted dying laws passed parliament.Credit: Jessica Hromas

Next was researching end-of-life care. It was only then, in 2017, that Riddle discovered that he would have no legal right to choose when he could die. It inspired him to become one of the public faces of the NSW campaign to legalise voluntary assisted dying.

On Thursday, 20 years after former Greens MLC Ian Cohen introduced legislation to the NSW Parliament to allow voluntary euthanasia, Riddle could finally feel relief.

He, along with veteran TV interviewer Andrew Denton - a passionate advocate for assisted dying who founded the group Go Gentle - and Penny Hackett from Dying with Dignity NSW, was in Macquarie Street to witness the historic vote.

“This reform will not only protect people from very real pain and suffering, but it will also bring tremendous peace of mind,” Riddle says. “When you get a bad diagnosis, there’s a lot of things to be afraid of but one of the things that you don’t need to be afraid of is the way you are going to die.”

The bill passed the lower house in November 53 votes to 36, and then 23 to 15 votes in the upper house. Sentiment has shifted significantly in the two decades since Cohen’s bill, which only secured the support of four MPs in the upper house.

The new laws limit access to voluntary assisted dying to people with terminal illnesses who will die within six months, or 12 months in the case of a person with a neurodegenerative condition experiencing unbearable suffering.

The person must be found to have the capacity to make the decision voluntarily without duress, and the application would be assessed by two medical practitioners.

For independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich, the passing of the bill was the second major social reform that he has shepherded through parliament this term.

In 2019, he introduced laws to decriminalise abortion, which caused much angst within the Liberal Party, including threats to former premier Gladys Berejiklian’s leadership.

Alex Greenwich, Member for Sydney, described the passing of the bill as a “day when compassion has won”.Credit: SMH

After the tumultuous period, Berejiklian vowed that there would be no more free votes on social issues in this term of parliament.

However, her successor Dominic Perrottet - a devout Catholic who opposes voluntary assisted dying - allowed his MPs a conscience vote.

He was also the first to speak in the debate, saying it was a “culture-changing decision” and warned the legacy of this term of parliament will be to “open a door that no one can close” if the bill passed.

Instead, Perrottet made a promise to improve palliative care: “Let me be clear, I failed in my former capacity as treasurer to address this issue. As Premier, I will fix it.”

Another opponent of Greenwich’s bill, Finance Minister Damien Tudehope, told the upper house on Thursday ahead of the final vote that it would be a “dark day” for NSW. “It is a sad day because it was an opportunity for NSW to say, ‘We can be better than this,’ ” Tudehope told parliament.

“More importantly, it is a commentary about where we have got to as a country. We have so diminished our respect for life to its natural end that we do not support proper wraparound services for people up to their death, and that we do not provide proper palliative care in regional areas.”

Voluntary assisted dying was the first bill in the history of the NSW parliament to pass without the support of the premier or opposition leader, and had 28 co-sponsors, more than any other piece of legislation in Australia.

Greenwich described the passing of the bill as a “day when compassion has won” but said there was more work to be done to ensure all terminally ill Australians could choose when to end their life.

“This has been a long journey in this place, there have been many attempts prior to this,” Greenwich said. “Now our focus must shift to the federal parliament, and it’s incumbent on our colleagues and federal partners to pass laws to allow the territories to be able to legislate for this compassion.”

The territories have been unable to make legislation on voluntary assisted dying since the so-called Andrews bill passed the federal parliament 25 years ago. The bill was introduced by Liberal MP Kevin Andrews in response to the Northern Territory legalising voluntary euthanasia in 1995.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison, however, has made it clear that he has no intention of seeking to overturn the ban on voluntary assisted dying if re-elected on Saturday, saying it was “not our policy”.

“There are differences between territories and states and that is under our constitution, and we’re not proposing any changes,” Morrison said on Thursday after the NSW vote.

Opposition leader Anthony Albanese last year publicly backed the rights of the territories to legislate on voluntary assisted dying. Labor has previously agreed to facilitate a vote on territory rights if it wins.

When NSW became the final state in the country to legalise voluntary assisted dying this week, the vote also sent a powerful message about the role of independents in parliament.

Amid debate over the impact that the teal independents could have on Saturday’s federal election outcome, as well as their effectiveness in parliament if elected, Greenwich says the assisted dying result showed that independents and minor parties could achieve reform.

Andrew Denton of Go Gentle Australia and Penny Hackett from Dying with Dignity standing in the Domain amid thousands of hearts with messages of support for voluntary assisted dying last year.Credit: Nick Moir

“Independents can bring difficult issues that the majority of MPs want dealt with but the factionalism of the major parties prevents them from doing it,” Greenwich says.

“And independents can break through the factions of the major parties but at the same time we can only achieve things when you work with the parties.”

For Riddle, the result is one that means he will have a choice in the way he dies if his suffering became too great.

“I just feel a huge sense of relief and I would encourage everyone in NSW to share my relief because death is the one universal,” Riddle says. “You may not know today that this reform is going to help you but it may in the future. I’d like everyone to feel a bit of relief because it gives everyone in NSW a choice.”

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