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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 9 Hansard (22 November) . . Page.. 2257 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

Advocates of euthanasia in Australia continue to propose legalised euthanasia like a slogan or mantra, without any apparent felt need to come to terms with any of its practical consequences, in disregard or in ignorance of its evident aberrations elsewhere. The risks of perversion are inherent in the nature of the problems surrounding dying and the nature of law, and could not therefore be avoided by regulation.

We need to listen carefully to some of these words. I mentioned studies elsewhere. People who have not done so should read the report of the New York State Task Force on Life and Law, which was brought down only last year, in May 1994. You do not need to go beyond these words in their executive summary, which are very significant:

After lengthy deliberations, the Task Force unanimously concluded that the dangers of such a dramatic change in public policy would far outweigh any possible benefits. In light of the pervasive failure of our health care system to treat pain and diagnose and treat depression -

it sounds like the ACT, does it not? -

legalising assisted suicide and euthanasia would be profoundly dangerous for many individuals who are ill and vulnerable. The risks would be most severe for those who are elderly, poor, socially disadvantaged, or without access to good medical care.

In the course of their research, many Task Force members were particularly struck by the degree to which requests for suicide assistance by terminally ill patients are correlated with clinical depression or unmanaged pain, both of which can ordinarily be treated effectively with current medical techniques. As a society, we can do far more to benefit these patients by improving pain relief and palliative care than by changing the law to make it easier to commit suicide or to obtain a lethal injection.

These people did not write those words lightly. They wrote them after very careful consideration of the facts as they understood them.

To revert to the paper on euthanasia in Holland, to which I referred before, it deals with the statistics of euthanasia, among other things, in Holland. It notes that in that year, and this is quoted by a number of authorities elsewhere, there were 1,000 instances of terminating life without any request. That is very interesting, because the advocates of law and regulation of this matter say, "You can write the laws and you can regulate so that everything is okay". Yet in the Netherlands in that year there were 1,000 cases of people being put down by a medical professional without the request of the patient. On that matter Brian Pollard reaches a number of conclusions, and again I will read them. He notes:

After making allowance for possible differences in culture and social attitudes, but remembering that human nature does not greatly differ with geography, I believe the lessons for Australia are these:

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