Dying with Dignity Tasmania Inc is a long-standing community organisation supporting better end of life choice and services. We encourage and support advance care planning, ongoing improvements in palliative care and end of life care services and legal voluntary assisted dying choice.
Dying with Dignity Tasmania has urged religious and medical opponents of voluntary assisted dying to show more compassion, care and respect for the people who will be eligible for voluntary assisted dying (VAD) under proposed legislation, for their doctors, and for members of Parliament. The newly-elected President of DwDTas, Hilde Nilsson, has also called on opponents to get reliable information on VAD laws and the proven safeguards in the proposed End of Life Choices Bill.
“We need more care for people and more facts, not irrational fears and irrelevant arguments like COVID-19, in the debate on this important legislation that the vast majority of the community wants,” Nilsson said.
Legislative Councillor Mike Gaffney will be moving his End of Life Choices Bill later in August.
Nilsson said it was very concerning to see comments from experienced doctors and religious opponents of VAD choice who don’t acknowledge or respond with compassion or respect for Tasmanians with intolerable and unrelievable suffering who will be eligible for voluntary assisted dying.
“I know from many years’ experience as a nurse that not all end of life suffering can be relieved and not everyone can be helped to have a good death, despite the best skills and intentions of our doctors and nurses. I urge opponents to look at the evidence and to listen to the people who are sharing their own heart-breaking stories and of their loved ones. Those people show the terrible situations that can occur. We want doctors, religious leaders and the Parliament to stop ignoring them,” said Nilsson.
The DwDTas spokesperson on VAD legislation, Margaret Sing, urged opponents to become better informed and rely on good evidence and reasonable assumptions about Mike Gaffney’s Bill instead of repeating the same old baseless fears.
Sing said it was hypocritical of opponents to call for another inquiry when they’ve taken no notice of any others, and when delays force more people into protracted suffering.
“It’s also a waste of time and money when multiple, thorough inquiries have already been done in Australia and elsewhere and have recommended laws like Mike Gaffney’s. Inquiries have all failed to find any evidence of people being coerced or manipulated into VAD or abuses of elderly people or people with disabilities. They’ve found no evidence of increases in elder abuse, suicides or increased fears of doctors,” Sing said.
Nilsson said it was disappointing to see disrespectful and unreasonable insinuations about the doctors who will be offering legal assisted dying and about the response of the government.
“Tasmanians have every reason to expect the voluntary assisted dying law will ensure doctors provide VAD safely here, as they have elsewhere, because of their skills and care and because of the independent scrutiny and reporting to Parliament that the Bill provides. It’s unreasonable to assume that the Tasmanian government would cut funding for other palliative care and other health services because of VAD,” Nilsson said. “It hasn’t happened anywhere else so opponents need to explain why it would happen here.”
DwDTas will be providing MPs with very detailed research information on the safety and effectiveness of VAD laws.
“Voluntary assisted dying laws are now long established, thoroughly scrutinised laws. There are now 20 jurisdictions with legal VAD and New Zealand is likely to become the twenty-first after its referendum in September. The number of laws is increasing because of overwhelming evidence they are needed, are working safely and are highly valued wherever they have been passed,” said Nilsson.
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