Page 2891 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 September 1994
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I deplore people - I am not suggesting that anybody here did; if they did, they will know that they did - scoring political points in this debate. What is really important is the people that we are speaking of when we debate such an issue. I have, as I said a moment ago, absolutely no hesitation whatsoever, in my own mind, about what we are attempting to pass here today. I am optimistic that this Assembly will give it the appropriate outcome.
MR HUMPHRIES (11.43): Madam Speaker, this Bill does challenge us to consider the appropriate limits of law-making in the ACT. Although the issue before us today is not as charged an issue as the original active euthanasia proposal put up by Mr Moore might have been if it had come on for debate here, it is still fraught with a whole range of medical and legal dilemmas or issues which we need to consider very carefully.
In a sense, I think, Madam Speaker, it is true to say that we have as much an obligation to look at what this legislation does not say as to look at what it actually says. I think, if we look at the words contained in the legislation itself, we would have to say - and I think I am supported in this by the other contributions in this debate - that there is little to object to in the wording itself of this legislation. Mr Kaine has made some comments about some words in the legislation, and I will come back to those in a moment. But the words themselves do not appear to present an enormous problem, particularly if one reads the transcript of the proceedings of the select committee and compares comments made there about the question of electing to withhold or withdraw treatment and the words that are contained in here. The contrast is not very great. I certainly think the amendments that have been put forward will improve that position; but the comment, nonetheless, stands. It is the principles at stake that are difficult to argue with.
I think, Madam Speaker, that the question, however, is what practices might result in our hospitals and medical centres as a result of the passage of this legislation that possibly we need to give more thought to. I do not know, because I am not a medical practitioner, how a doctor might react to, might deal with, the sorts of issues which are raised in this legislation. I would say that he or she would consider this to be a framework in which they would welcome working, but I do not know for certain. I do not know for certain how this will affect those practices.
Let us examine the Bill itself for a moment. The Bill grants a simple right to refuse medical treatment, either generally or in a particular respect, where a person fulfils certain criteria: They are of sound mind, they have attained the age of 18 years and they have made a written or oral direction to that effect or they have completed a power of attorney which, in turn, allows somebody else to exercise that power for them. Having stated that bald right, the right itself is then heavily hemmed in and regulated. The capacity to give a direction is tightly limited by the Bill. The conditions for its validity, indeed, are similar to those of a will. There need to be two witnesses present at the same time to witness the person's signature and then to sign that document at the same time, in each other's presence.
Having established that direction, there are a number of qualifications, or hemming in, if you like, of this right, this capacity to make this direction. First of all, the direction can be very easily revoked; for example, by an oral revocation, even though the direction itself was originally a written one. A health professional, in turn, has to explain the
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