News

Suicide is the leading cause of death for Australians aged 15 to 40.

Millions are spent to prevent suicides of thousands of Australians every year.

Queensland could soon overturn this social support for those who feel mentally overwhelmed.

A new assisted suicide bill pours millions of dollars into doctors and nurses advising about suicide and administering poison to patients, so long as they have “mental suffering” and are told they have a year to live.

The Queensland bill extends eligibility from the six months restriction in ‘life expectancy’ in WA and Victoria to 12 months.

The bill expressly permits doctors to initiate a discussion solely about assisted suicide.

It also permits registered nurses with requisite experience and VAD certification in WA or Queensland to administer the poisonous cocktail.

The Victorian government wrongly predicted the state’s assisted suicide laws would help the euthanasia of a dozen people every year.

Two years later, 224 vulnerable Victorians have been killed by a state-provided death-enabling cocktail, and a further 259 declined to use the poison they were provided with.

New amendments to the “End-Of-Life Option Act” in California reveals what pro-euthanasia advocates are expecting just five years after introduction: a removal of what the sponsoring Senator calls “roadblocks”.

The bill, SB 380, reduces 15 days between oral requests for euthanasia to just two days, and it also compels conscientious-objecting doctors to refer patients and hampers religious care and hospital institutions from declining to assist in a suicide. 

Meanwhile, palliative care spending and public awareness is languishing behind world-class standards in Victoria, Queensland and WA.

Funding and staffing for holistic palliative care for dying patients is over $100 million behind national benchmarks in all three states. Queensland has just one third of the palliative care specialists required for their population.

A recent survey by Palliative Care Australia found just 4 in 10 Australians (39 per cent) know a person can ask for palliative care when they are first diagnosed with a terminal, chronic, or degenerative illness.

“About 40,000 people a year we estimate are not accessing palliative care [when they need it]" PCA deputy chair Helen Walker told the ABC, as carers called for better education around available services.

Spending millions on euthanasia reverses the anti-suicide culture. It pushes potentially millions of Australians into a new deadly rejected category, according to The Australian’s Paul Kelly.

He observes that “Euthanasia creates two classes of social citizens – those who lives are deemed to be inviolable, and those who are deemed to be better off dead.”

Mental health presentations in the latter half of 2020 jumped 23 percent in Victoria. Ninety-four people died by state-provided poison in the same period.

Both the Victorian and Queensland governments are seeking exemptions from the Commonwealth offence of using a “carriage service” to encourage suicide. The protections to halt the suicide of any rational adult are being torn down.

The WA law comes into effect on July 1.