Joint Committee on End of Life Choices

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (16:03): I move:

That the report of the committee be noted.

I am not going to speak for very long on this at all. There will be, I think, plenty of time to speak on the issues that were traversed by the committee and in this report in the not-too-distant future, when legislation will no doubt be brought before the chambers of parliament on voluntary assisted dying.

In relation to the report on end-of-life choices, I wish to thank first and foremost the many witnesses who provided submissions. There were over 120 individual submissions and dozens of witnesses who participated in the hearings of the committee.

I particularly want to thank the staff of this chamber who serviced that committee very diligently, with the added complexity of having a joint house committee and having to have quorum not just from this chamber but from another chamber, who, quite frankly, sir, are much greater rabble than we and more difficult to control. It was a stellar job in doing that. Specifically, I thank Mr Anthony Beasley from the Clerk's office and the research officer, Dr Robinson, for the work in preparing this report.

It is a difficult issue. As many witnesses who appeared before this committee noted, end-of-life issues are not something we like to talk about or deal with particularly well in our society. There were a number of areas that the committee was challenged with looking at and that the report covers, including the important role that palliative care plays in our society for people facing the end of their life and that it should be funded properly.

The committee looked at advance care directives and how they operate, with a particular emphasis on how they operate differently in different jurisdictions. I think the committee was pretty unanimous in its desire that there ought to be some better uniformity in how advance care directives operate across states. People are not static and do not always live in one state for the whole of their lives.

A very substantial part of the committee's deliberations involved voluntary assisted dying. I believe there have been some 16 attempts at different pieces of legislation over the last quarter of a century before the chambers of the South Australian parliament. Many of them have involved the late member for Fisher, Dr Bob Such. A number have involved the Hon. Mark Parnell from this chamber.

The committee particularly focused on the Victorian voluntary assisted dying model and how that has operated. If any of the last 16 pieces of legislation before the South Australian parliament had been successful, South Australia would have been the first jurisdiction to successfully have a scheme operating in Australia, after the Northern Territory's was disallowed by the federal government many years ago.

That has now changed. There has been a scheme operating since the middle of last year in Victoria and there is a scheme about to operate in Western Australia. I believe this very week there will be debate in the Tasmanian parliament, and soon after they have their election the Queensland parliament I think will follow on voluntary assisted dying. It was recognised that there has been a change. It is not something that would make us unique and the first in Australia to have such a scheme.

A range of witnesses talked about the operation of the Victorian scheme and, again, reasonable people have come to different views about these and many other issues that both major parties declare as conscience issues. There were certainly witnesses who, no matter how protected or restrictive a scheme might be, were just opposed to the idea of voluntary assisted dying.

There were many, including health professionals, whom the committee took evidence from who thought the Victorian model was too restrictive. It has been commented on as being the most conservative or restricted model operating in any jurisdiction around the world. There was certainly evidence taken that the restrictions might be too onerous and place too many difficulties on people accessing the scheme.

The first report on the operation of the Victorian model noted that in the first six months 52 Victorians utilised the voluntary assisted dying scheme. The head of the review committee for voluntary assisted dying, former Victorian Supreme Court Justice Betty King, in her report on the first six months of operation noted that, of the 52 cases they examined, compliance with the requirements in the Victorian scheme was 100 per cent. Again, I think this is a change from when our legislation has been considered previously by this parliament, in that there has been a scheme operating and the report has noted absolute compliance with the regulations in the scheme.

They are some of the important issues that the committee took evidence on. I think another one that had an impact on many members of the committee was evidence from both the SA Police and the Coroner's Office. SA Police, quite unusually in my experience, put in a written submission supporting a legislated voluntary assisted dying scheme in South Australia. They did not appear as witnesses at the committee, but that was the written submission. The Coroner's Office, which appeared before the committee, spoke of some of the effects that it has when there is not a legislated way for people to end their life with dignity and they effectively take matters into their own hands.

From memory, around 10 per cent of suicides that first responders—and I think this was from the police, not the Coroner—have to deal with are by people who are facing a terminal illness who do not want to go on with their own lives. That puts tremendous pressure on first responders but more so on the families, the loved ones of those who have chosen to end their own lives without a way of being able to access a voluntary assisted dying scheme.

Again, there was a range of views on voluntary assisted dying, which is to be expected. I would expect in the not-too-distant future, possibly within the coming weeks, that as members of parliament it is something we will need to start turning our minds to.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. T.J. Stephens.