Queensland election: Hospital chain ‘won’t allow euthanasia’

Queensland’s biggest private hospital operator will deny access to elective euthanasia and won’t refer-on patients seeking to end their lives if the right to die is legislated.

Tanya Battel on Wednesday. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

Queensland’s biggest private hospital operator will deny access to elective euthanasia and won’t refer-on patients seeking to end their lives if the right to die is legislated by the next state parliament.

Mater Group chairman Francis Sullivan says it is “not in the mission” of the 10-strong hospital chain to facilitate voluntary assisted dying and it would opt out if Queensland became the third state to embrace it.

“We are determined to provide comprehensive healthcare from cradle to the grave,” he says. “We respect the process of life including the dying process but it is not in our mission to accelerate death and certainly not in our mission to directly intervene to cause death.”

Writing for The Australian, Mr Sullivan urges voters to quiz candidates on their position on euthan­asia ahead of Saturday fortnight’s state election.

He says Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Liberal National Party leader Deb Frecklington each need to make a “clear statement” on what they would do with draft VAD legislation now before the Queensland Law Reform Commission.

Ms Frecklington would not be drawn on whether an LNP government would present a bill to parliament, saying only that if elected, the LNP it would consider the commission’s report, which is due next March.

On whether she was for or against VAD, she said on Wednesday: “No one should die in pain or alone. More needs to be done to improve palliative care.”

Ms Palaszczuk’s office did not respond to questions. She has previously said the death from cancer of her grandfather was horrific, but this did not mean a VAD law would be pursued by Labor.

Assisted dying for terminally ill people is the sleeper issue of the campaign, an election within an election conducted at the grassroots level by churches and advocacy groups that have mobilised statewide to make their case.

Pro-VAD group Dying with Dignity Queensland is surveying more than 500 candidates across all 93 state electorates, and plans to publish results next week. It has targeted five marginal seats with mailouts and social media.

For breast cancer sufferer Tanya Battel, 56, confronting a terminal diagnosis, the question is deeply personal. “My vote will go to whoever progresses this legislation,” she said. “To me, it’s the big issue and I know a lot of people who feel the same way.”

The Catholic Church has issued a pastoral letter signed by Archbishop of Brisbane Mark Coleridge and five other Queensland bishops launching a “training program … to help people understand what choices they already have and what pathways already exist to ensure a dignified and peaceful death”.

This was promoted at Catholic services last weekend on what was billed as “no euthanasia” Sunday.

Mater hospitals in Brisbane, Bundaberg, Rockhampton, Mac­kay and Townsville provide 1500 beds, employing more than 10,000 staff. The group describes itself as a Catholic not-for-profit ministry.

Mr Sullivan, who achieved nat­ional prominence heading the church’s Truth, Justice and Healing Council during the royal commission into institutional child sex abuse, accepts “there is a trend towards assisted dying” and the hospital service is “not interested in preaching to people about the choices they would make”.

Any Queensland legislation must reflect provisions of the baseline Victorian law for an “institutional right of conscientious objection” and not compel hospitals to refer-on patients wanting to die, he says.

However, the Mater Group will not seek to impede those who request VAD, he says.

“We will assist a patient to transfer if they choose to do so … we will not deny information or open discussion about their options.”

Ms Palaszczuk has said the Labor government would reprise the process used to enact abortion decriminalisation law in 2018.

In March, an all-party parliamentary committee delivered a majority report — excluding the LNP members — backing assisted dying and referred to the QLRC draft legislation by former Queensland law reform commissioners and academics Ben White and Lindy Willmott.

The draft bill would allow a health or aged-care “entity” to refuse VAD, but it must arrange to transfer the patient to a facility where this could be administered.

In Victoria, the only state where VAD is operating, most of the 124 people to die in the scheme’s first year took the lethal medication at home.

Voluntary Assisted Dying Implementation Taskforce chair ­Julian Gardner confirmed deaths had happened in hospitals, though data had not been released on the number of them or the split between private and state-run centres.