Page 2876 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 September 1994
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would seem to be sensible amendments. A useful issue for the Social Policy Committee or another committee in the next Assembly could well be the issue of informed consent - not just in the context of natural death and dying, but across the whole range of individuals' dealings with the health system. It is a massively difficult issue, not one that I want to propose an instantaneous solution to, and a subject that could well benefit from being aired in an Assembly committee and a consensual approach to a solution. So, I recommend that to whoever will be looking after committees in the next Assembly. This provision here expands on what is required in informed consent in this context, and for that reason it will be supported.
MRS CARNELL (Leader of the Opposition) (10.45): Madam Speaker, as a member of the committee that came up with this legislation, I believe that it does achieve the ends that the various people who appeared before the committee and society itself want. The Liberal Party will be treating this Bill as a conscience issue. Therefore, everybody will be making their own decision on it.
Ms Follett: Does that mean that you would split?
MRS CARNELL: No; it is just a conscience issue.
Mr Humphries: It means that we have a conscience. That is what it means.
Mr Berry: Whenever you cannot agree on anything, it is a conscience issue.
Mr Humphries: We will tell sometime what it means.
MRS CARNELL: All right; we could have a debate on consciences. I think that anybody who has been through the sort of committee process that we went through or anybody who has had a look at the health system will know that the difficulty of balancing rights in this area is going to become more and more complex as medical technology becomes more and more advanced. Mr Connolly made a number of very good points, many of which were along the line that medical technology can now keep people alive indefinitely, with absolutely no brain function at all. People can end up alive, but with absolutely no quality of life at all. This Bill attempts to place, and I think it does place, top priority on the quality of life, as distinct from maintaining life artificially, with potential suffering. Secondly, it provides legal protection to medical practitioners who act ethically, in good faith, and who comply with the clear instructions issued by the patient who is of sound mind. That meets the conditions of the Bill, which has a quite onerous set of requirements.
I know that, if Mr Moore had his way totally, all of the requirements that are in this Bill would not be there. But what we have attempted to come up with is, again, a balance of the rights of the people involved. One thing that happens in the medical arena when you get heavily into the medical technology area - doctors, nurses and others would be the first to admit this - is that the rights of the patient are often not thought about a lot. It is very hard to take into account what the patient really wants when a patient is unconscious, heavily medicated, or whatever. It is important to give a patient the capacity to make their will clear, prior to those situations happening, or to give a patient
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