Daniel Andrews to push ahead with euthanasia laws

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews will push ahead with laws to allow ­assisted suicide in limited circumstances.

Daniel Andrews’s views on assisted suicide have shifted after the death of his father this year from cancer. Picture: AAP

Premier Daniel Andrews will push ahead with laws to allow ­assisted suicide in limited circumstances, making Victoria the first state to legalise euthanasia.

Despite not endorsing a ­recommendation for assisted-dying laws in the government’s ­response to a committee yesterday, the Premier revealed the ­government would have a bill ready to introduce in the second half of next year.

“Each and every member of my team will have a conscience vote and I am confident that each and every member of the parliament more broadly will search their conscience, search their values and search their personal experiences to make a decision that they ­believe is the right decision for the future,” he said.

“There is a small number who are denied the choice that they would seek to legitimately make conscious of the consequences, surrounded by loved ones, empowered and given options and choices and control over those final moments of their life.

“We currently, because of the way those laws are written, don’t give those small number of people … that compassion, that choice, that power over their own life.”

Mr Andrews, whose views on assisted suicide have shifted after the death of his father this year from cancer, acknowledged the issue would divide the parliament and the community but called for a civil debate.

“We have the opportunity for this to be the parliament at its best. There is no reason for this to be anything other than a civil, serious and sometime intense debate,’’ he said.

Mr Andrews said he would vote for the bill if it had the ­required safeguards, but MPs on his side would get a conscience vote. The Coalition is expected to take a similar approach, although Opposition Leader Matthew Guy does not support the change.

Mr Guy said yesterday he respected it was a “difficult issue” but he wished the government would focus instead on fixing the law and order “crisis” instead. “The government is running off to an issue that it feels, I fear, is more of a political distraction rather than focusing on some of those issues.

“I worry that the government is going to spend a lot of its time, a lot of the parliament’s time, on an issue that isn’t solving the day to day concerns of Victorians.”

The laws, if passed, would make assisted suicide available to terminally patients of sound mind who were residents of Victoria.

The Premier also said he thought the law would be safe from federal challenge protecting it from an Northern Territory- style situation where the Territory’s laws were overruled by the federal government in 1997.

“The commonwealth has no power to intervene. States are sovereign in their right and as such we can make law in this area,” he said.

Health Minister Jill Hennessy said the bill would have adequate protections to prevent the exploitation of vulnerable elderly people and it would be available only to terminal patients with no other options who had been assessed by two doctors.

She said the system would be based on the model established in the US state of Oregon where 0.4 per cent of people had taken the route of assisted suicide.

Doctors would be able to exercise their conscience to not participate in assisted dying.