A direct challenge to Shadow Minister Inga Peulich
Mrs Inga Peulich is MLC for the Victorian state region of South-Eastern Metropolitan and is Shadow Minister for Multicultural Affairs and for Scrutiny of Government. She is a member of the Parliament's Legal and Social Issues Committee, which recently recommended assisted dying law reform.
She has previously made clear her personal opposition toward assisted dying law reform. It's no surprise then that she wrote a minority report against her own Committee's final recommendations. What is surprising is the incoherence of her report.
They're biased but I'm not
Mrs Peulich rails against the inquiry being held in the first place, saying that she outright opposed the call. It's curious then that she remained on the Committee once the inquiry was mandated by the Legislative Council.
Even more telling is that Mrs Peulich accuses her fellow Parliamentary Committee members of unmitigated bias—that they simply reached a foregone conclusion. Not only does such hubris demonstrate a breathtaking disregard for the dedication and professionalism of her fellow Parliamentarians, it reveals a comprehensive failure of self-reflection: that other members are biased for the possibility of a supportive stance, but she is not for her preset and entrenched opposition.
The criticism is all the more galling for the fact that Mrs Peulich missed a number of meetings to hear from expert witnesses. Other members were informed and their position changed or at least nuanced by the evidence and advice.
The ramble
Mrs Peulich's minority report then launches into a ramble of conjecture, raising many of the tired old discredited arguments against assisted dying without reference to a single cited fact; incoherently even making points that the Committees' final report (hundreds of pages, fully cited) can't support...and ones that I specifically, comprehensively and evidentially refuted in my submission to and expert witness appearance before the Committee.
At least one appropriate omission
I can say that in response to a question Mrs Peulich asked me about non-voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands, in what she might have anticipated as a 'gotcha' moment, I used empirical scientific evidence to blast the premise of her question—that legalisation of voluntary euthanasia has increased the rate of Dutch non-voluntary euthanasia—out of the water. The rate has dropped dramatically, not increased. At least she didn't raise that hoary old Dutch chestnut directly in her report.
Selective perfectionism
It would be tedious to address every item of unsupported conjecture and misinformation in Mrs Peulich's report. However, one other claim is worthy of discussion. It's an argument she's made before. She says this in regard to assisted dying law reform:
"...people will die as a result of accident, error or misdiagnosis. Any accidental loss of life – even the loss of one life, means such a regime cannot be justified."
Putting aside for the moment the premise of the statement, Mrs Peulich's selectivity is remarkable.
Published scientific research shows that of hospital admissions (Australia), around 0.4% result in death as a consequence of preventable medical error.1 The study was published some twenty years ago, so let's assume that the error rate has dropped—by virtue of greatly improved record keeping, communication, transparency, procedures and technology since then—by a factor of ten: that is, a preventable medical error death rate of 0.04%.
That still means that at least dozens of Victorians die each year as a result of preventable medical error.
If Mrs Peulich argues that no system can be justified if it results in the erroneous loss of a single life, then she must equally argue for the closure and prohibition of the entire Victorian hospital system. Or admit that she's irrationally biased against the option of assisted dying.
Missing critical Oregon 'information'
Yet the most telling thing is what is missing from Mrs Peulich's minority report.
On April 8th 2010, as keynote speaker and in her capacity as member of the Victorian Parliament, at Australian Catholic University's Interfaith Symposium on Death and Dying, she made this unequivocal statement:
"The Oregon experience, which legislated the taking of medication to bring about euthanasia indicates unfortunately that it does occur, that older patients who are tapping into more expensive care are encouraged often to bring about their own earlier demise."
Such a situation would be a very, very serious matter indeed.
But did Mrs Peulich furnish any evidence to support her allegation? No, none whatsoever.
If she believes this matter to be true, and it would be of critical importance to the inquiry to which she was directly a party and would strongly support her case against reform, why does it not appear in her minority report?
Mrs Peulich, put up or apologise
The claim is bunkum. Having extensively studied dozens of reports about and scientific studies into practices in Oregon and personally interviewed key Oregonian stakeholders (for, against and neutral), I have found not a shred of evidence that supports Mrs Peulich's categorical assertion.
I expressly challenge Mrs Peulich to furnish the necessary, verifiable, authoritative evidence (not mere self-serving gossip and scuttlebutt), and to explain why it does not appear as evidence to her own Committee's investigation.
If she is unable to provide such evidence or satisfactorily explain its absence from her minority report, it is my view that she owes the people of Victoria an apology for the spreading of misinformation on the taxpayer's tab.
A dead bat to this challenge would only serve to highlight that her claims are rubbish and that this kind of approach deserves no place in the important public discourse about assisted dying.
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1. Wilson, Ross McL, Runciman, William B., Gibberd, Robert W., Harrison, Bernadette T., Newby, Liza & Hamilton, John D.. 1995. The Quality in Australian Healthcare Study. Medical Journal of Australia 163: 458-471.