Graham Richardson, long-time euthanasia supporter, wants it for himself

Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson wants the choice to die on his own terms; not in secret and not with help.

Graham Richardson with his wife Amanda at home in Sydney. Picture: Ryan Osland.

In the end, Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson wants the choice to die on his own terms; not in secret and not with anybody else’s help.

First, however, he and wife Amanda have a deal.

Richo, as he is affectionately known, must live long enough to see his 10-year-old son D’Arcy’s 21st birthday.

“At this point, it is totally hypothetical,” Mrs Richardson said at the couple’s home in Dover Heights, Sydney, yesterday.

“My job is to keep him alive until after that birthday. There is no point talking about it before then, it’s just not going to happen.”

But Richo is talking about it and, writing in The Australian today, he paints a harrowing portrait of his life after he had multiple organs removed during surgery 18 months ago to fight cancer.

“I am a burden on my family now and I want to, when my health gets even worse, be able to take the decision myself,” he said yesterday.

“I don’t want a doctor to do it, I don’t want my family to do it and I don’t want it to be hush-hush.”

As he talks he realises he has missed his morning round of tablets and counts each one — 14 in all — before downing them in quick succession.

“She gets the shits when I don’t do it,” he said.

The 68-year-old former Hawke and Keating government minister says he has always backed euthanasia, lamenting a missed opportunity for reform when the Northern Territory first legalised assisted dying. But now he knows he wants it for himself.

His position puts him at odds with his former boss, Paul Keating, who yesterday told Fairfax Media that Victoria’s Voluntary Assisted Dying bill represents “an unacceptable departure in our approach to human existence ... and what it means to be human”.

Mrs Richardson is less sure than her husband. “I keep thinking about what happens when you are very ill or long-term ill and you have a bad day and find it hard to cope,” she said.

“Do you do it then? That happens all the time, but then of course people go on to have good days.”

Her position is complicated by watching her father die following a cancer diagnosis. She says he was rushed to death by a doctor without his permission.

“He was convulsing and his eyes rolled back into his head,” she said. “He had his right to die in his own home taken from him.”

Mr Richardson told The Australian euthanasia should be put to a postal survey just like same-sex marriage and he believed it would win by a similar predicted margin: 60 to 66 per cent in favour. “The people get it, and this idea that there are all these people dying in Holland and whatever other place is just a false argument, it’s not true,” he said.

Read Graham Richardson’s opinion piece on euthanasia online on Friday