Seales Family Welcomes Australian Inquiry Recommendation on Assisted Dying Legislation

The family of Lecretia Seales today welcomed the news that a cross-party select committee in the Australian state of Victoria has tabled a report recommending that the Victorian Parliament implement assisted dying law changes, acknowledging that it may have implications for the inquiry underway in New Zealand.

The inquiry was initiated in May 2015 and the report was tabled in Victorian Parliament yesterday.

“It’s hard to see how a New Zealand inquiry, looking at the same international evidence, and similar coronial evidence, could come to a different conclusion,” said Matt Vickers, widower of the late Lecretia Seales. “If the MPs on the New Zealand inquiry don’t recommend a law change, they will be going against all the evidence that is out there to support one, and the findings of their peers in Australia and Canada.”

New Zealand’s Health Select Committee initiated a parliamentary enquiry in July 2015, after the Voluntary Euthanasia Society presented a petition to parliament calling for one. Submissions for that inquiry closed in February 2016 after more than 15,000 written submissions were received.

Legislative change in Australia is supported by the Australian Nurses and Midwifery Federation, former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and broadcaster Andrew Denton. Mr Denton visits New Zealand in June for a series of talks, beginning on June 19th in Wellington, followed by the 20th in Christchurch, and the 22nd in Napier, discussing his experience of visiting the Netherlands, Belgium and Oregon to explore the implementation of assisted dying laws in those jurisdictions.

Assisted dying is illegal in Australia. It was briefly legal in the Northern Territory in 1995, with the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act, and was the first jurisdiction in the world to legalise assisted dying. The Act was overridden at the federal level in 1997. However the report from the Victorian inquiry may see assisted dying become legal in the state of Victoria, should the Victorian government adopt the recommendations.

One of the key influences on the decision was coronial evidence that some Australians were killing themselves rather than enduring their terminal illnesses, and that it was clear that assisted dying legislation may have had the effect of helping those people live longer. Similar evidence was presented in Seales v Attorney-General in New Zealand by historian John Weaver, who revealed that between 5-8% of deaths recorded as suicides in New Zealand between 1900 and 2000 were instead terminally ill people who were seeking to avoid the worst of their illnesses. The judge in Seales v Attorney General accepted that the law as it stands may be contributing to this phenomenon in New Zealand.

The Health Select Committee inquiry in New Zealand on assisted dying continues, but has not yet given an indication on when they may produce their own report.

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