Euthanasia: virtues and ethics will be disrupted if we cross threshold

Premier Daniel Andrews. Picture: Nicole Garmston

This is a sad and profoundly worrying moment for our country. The virtues and ethics that bind families and loved ones have been disrupted by a misguided Victorian lower house.

An Australian jurisdiction is close to crossing a threshold that constitutes a fundamental departure in our attitudes towards human life — and has acted under the misguided logic that safeguards can be effective.

The experience in every jurisdiction where physicians are authorised to kill patients or assist patients to kill themselves is an expanding cycle of terminations.

The numbers who “benefit” from this law will be far outweighed by the number of vulnerable, sick, disabled and elderly living in a new norm where expectations of “doing the right thing” and ceasing to be a burden will be immense.

The warnings from Palliative Care Victoria could not have been clearer. Australian Medical Association president Michael Gannon said this step meant crossing the Rubicon and restated the peak body’s position that “doctors should not be involved in interventions that have as their primary intention the ending of a person’s life”.

As Paul Keating eloquently said this week: “It is misleading to think allowing people to terminate their life is without consequence for the entire society.”

Again, as the former Labor prime minister said, having good intentions is not enough. Being compassionate is not enough. Having loving motives is not enough. The task of legislators is to examine the ethics that should govern our society and best express the enduring civilisational principles that honour human life.

This law imposes arbitrary boundaries on who is entitled to euthanasia and who is denied — boundaries that will be challenged both informally and formally on grounds of discrimination. That is inevitable.

There is no denying legislators were sincerely motivated and faced difficult choices with negatives on both sides. Rejecting this bill meant some people would face extra pain and suffering and that is a hard call for legislators.

On the other hand, its passage will have wide ramifications as this new norm seeps into the medical, health and institutional arrangements of the state.

It is to be hoped the passage of this bill through the Victorian lower house will ignite a deeper debate and reassessment, with far more community leaders taking a stand as other state parliaments consider the issue.