Posted on Wednesday 18th October 2017 at 9:41pm

Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating once famously branded the Senate “unrepresentative swill” for obstructing his legislative agenda. Today, the question of how representative our political masters are remains moot.

Major community support for VAD

Take voluntary assisted dying (VAD) for example. Poll after poll demonstrates that the overwhelming majority of Australians want this additional choice for people in extremis at the end of life. The impeccable Australian Election Survey (AES) conducted by Australian National University scholars last year confirmed that 77% of Australians want VAD reform, with 13% undecided and just 10% opposed.

Posted on Friday 13th October 2017 at 10:11am

Anglican and Catholic bishops seem to be going out of their way to alienate their constituencies, including in respect of voluntary assisted dying and marriage equality law reform. As a result, the writing on the wall is writ large for the continued decline of religion in Australia.

Many Australian clerics are trying their hardest to foil Parliamentary attempts to drag Australia into the 21^st century on social policy. They seem to care little for the ongoing demise of their own constituencies.

Religion declining since the 1960s

Posted on Tuesday 10th October 2017 at 7:58am

As the Parliament of Victoria prepares to debate an assisted dying Bill, South Australian Catholic anti-assisted-dying lobbyist Mr Paul Russell is at it again. This time he's sent a missive to Victorian politicians shouting about, amongst other things, a crisis of assisted dying numbers in Washington state. He’s conveniently cherry-picked his arguments again.

Mr Russell wrote that in Washington state:

“deaths from lethal drugs prescribed under the Act have nearly quadrupled (376%) from 51 in 2010 to 192 in 2016.”

Posted on Tuesday 19th September 2017 at 10:30pm

As reported in The Age, on Tuesday this week three AMA doctors fronted the Victorian Parliament to spread the word about their perceived horrors of an assisted dying law. Their arguments don’t hold water and politicians should see them for what they are: utter nonsense.

Doctors Stephen Parnis, Mukesh Haikerwal and Mark Yates say they will continue to lobby politicians.

With what?

Here is the ‘substance’ of their arguments — a sticky blomonge of the same old confected and discredited claims.

The vulnerable will be at risk

Dr Parnis said that such a law “puts the most frail and vulnerable in our community — the dying — at profound risk,” pointing to coercion, and patients not getting the medical care they need.

Posted on Thursday 14th September 2017 at 10:20pm

It’s very disappointing that Catholic theologian Dr Joel Hodge’s recent editorial in Fairfax media about assisted dying law reform contained misinformation: the same old tired and discredited story trotted out as though it's true. Dr Hodge also repeated an old and curiously one-sided (Catholic) examination of the hypothetical slippery slope.

Unhappily, the kind of misinformation that Dr Hodge advances muddies the waters and cruelly stands in the way of legislative action, which most Australians want.

Posted on Sunday 6th August 2017 at 2:31am

In Monday’s Herald Sun, Victorian Archbishops Philip Freier and Denis Hart, and Bishops Ezekiel, Suriel, Lester Briebbenow, Bosco Puthur and Peter Stasiuk published a half-page advertisement admonishing the Victorian government for its initiative to legalise assisted dying for the terminally ill, an ad similar to the one published by religious figures in 2008.

I have no quarrel with individuals of faith regarding their own private beliefs. However, the bishops’ attempt at public “leadership” through the advertisement is deserving of redress for its multiple fallacies.

The ‘abandonment’ fallacy

Posted on Thursday 27th July 2017 at 11:52pm

In his latest blog, titled “Who are you going to trust?”, anti-assisted dying lobbyist Mr Paul Russell says:

“Polling noted today in the Australian shows a significant level of distrust in our political classes to get the issue of euthanasia and assisted dying right.”

He then goes on to quote some select statistics from said poll. In his blog, he mentions nothing about the sponsorship or conduct of the poll. After some searching, I found no other reference to said poll on his ‘HOPE’ website.

This is rather curious, because The Australian article he quotes, points out that the ‘poll’ was commissioned by him (his website is called ‘HOPE’).

Posted on Friday 21st July 2017 at 1:53am

The Victorian Government has introduced its assisted dying Bill into the Victorian Parliament. It's based on extensive consultation with a wide range of stakeholders, and over 1,000 submissions. You can read all about it here.

The Ministerial Advisory Panel on voluntary assisted dying today handed down its final report to the Government.

The Panel was comprised of seven subject experts, with Professor Brian Owler as Chair and Professor Margaret O'Connor as Deputy Chair.

Posted on Wednesday 21st June 2017 at 3:14am

I’ve previously published an extensive analysis of how Professor Margaret Somerville, of the Catholic Notre Dame University of Australia, cherry-picked her way through select data that seemed to be (but wasn’t) consistent with her ‘contagion’ theory from assisted dying to the general suicide rate. I provided ample evidence from lawful jurisdictions that comprehensively contradicts her claim. I also published the summary in ABC Religion & Ethics.

Yet Somerville still says despite extensive real-world experience to the contrary, that “I believe that my [suicide contagion] statement will prove to be correct.”

Posted on Tuesday 20th June 2017 at 9:23pm

I’ve criticised Catholic ethicist Professor Margaret Somerville in the past for promoting misinformation about assisted dying. One of her favourite stories is about supposed non-voluntary euthanasia (NVE) ‘contagion’ from voluntary euthanasia laws.

NVE is where a doctor deliberately hastens the death of a patient without a current explicit request from the patient.

Somerville claims that elderly Dutch citizens fear NVE — a slippery slope claim previously promoted by the Vatican. She stated that:

Posted on Saturday 11th February 2017 at 1:02am

In response to my previous post about the religious basis of organised opposition to assisted dying, Dr Katherine Pettus, Advocacy and Human Rights Officer at the International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care (IAHPC), tweeted:

 “#Catholic church @Pontifex believes all life is sacred&supports #PalliativeCare and use of strong #pain medicines” — Dr Katherine Pettus

Posted on Saturday 3rd September 2016 at 4:44am

I recently exposed (another) piece of misinformation published by LifeSiteNews, and wrote courteously to them to request withdrawal of the offending article. While I wasn’t hopeful the request would be accepted, I wasn’t prepared for the shocking and vile response I received.

Exposing bull about assisted dying is a key purpose of DyingForChoice.com and it will continue to do so as long as bull is published or publicly spoken, and especially when it makes claims or generates innuendo that is at odds with the readily-available facts, as a smokescreen for fundamentally religious objections.

The specific request to withdraw

Posted on Sunday 28th August 2016 at 12:58am

The latest misinformation employed by assisted dying opponents is to imply that Belgium’s general suicide rate is high as a consequence of its assisted dying law: i.e. to argue the discredited 'suicide contagion' line which has in the past been peddled about the USA state of Oregon. I have demonstrated that it was false in Oregon, and I equally demonstrate here that it's false in Belgium.

Mr Brad Mattes recently published emotional anti-assisted-dying nonsense in LifeSiteNews. (LifeSiteNews is a Canadian blog site that was established by the conservative Christian Campaign for Life Coalition and which has a primary principle of promoting “traditional Judeo-Christian principles”.

Posted on Wednesday 3rd August 2016 at 4:15am

Assisted dying critic Mr Paul Russell has done it again. I’m beginning to think that he’s a tremendous asset to the pro-assisted-dying movement. Why would I say that?

Well, this time his pronouncements appear in National Right To Life News, the online newspaper of the USA Catholic-founded National Right To Life Committee, and in which Mr Russell represents ‘HOPE,’ his anti-euthanasia lobby platform founded by the Australian Family Association—itself Catholic-founded and backed.

The complaint

Posted on Tuesday 19th April 2016 at 2:00am

The Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby, Mr Lyle Shelton, is at it again.

Yesterday, he tweeted ABC's Q&A program as thousands of people do while it is on air. His tweet was broadcast live to air as shown above. What did he say as panelists were discussing assisted dying law reform?

"Sadly voluntary euthanasia quickly became involuntary euthanasia in Holland. #qanda" LyleShelton

Mr Shelton's claim is bunkum.

Posted on Tuesday 8th March 2016 at 7:53pm

Australia's Medical Registration Board (AHPRA) has told Dr Rodney Syme that he is a serious danger to patients.

Dr Rodney Syme, who occasionally provides advice and medication for dying patients to give them control over their dying process, has been reprimanded by Australia's Medical Registration Board (AHPRA) for posing a 'serious danger' to such patients. The story has been reported widely in the media.

Posted on Saturday 2nd January 2016 at 12:35am

A new scholarly journal focused on end-of-life ethics, decision-making and practice has just been launched: the Journal of Assisted Dying. In the first article, claims by Oregon lobby group Physicians for Compassionate Care (PCC), including Doctors Bill (William) Toffler and Ken Stevens (and others) are assessed against empirical evidence and found to be completely wrong, or highly misleading as a result of selective use of data.

The new scholarly journal, the Journal of Assisted Dying, is dedicated to careful and holistic analysis of evidence in regard to the various forms of assisted dying that are lawful in a number of jurisdictions around the world... and to practices in jurisdictions where assisted dying remains illegal.

Posted on Sunday 22nd November 2015 at 5:05am

The standing Legal and Social Issues Comittee of the Parliament of Victoria, Australia, is currently conducting an inquiry into end-of-life decision making, to inform any legislative changes required in order to reflect contemprary views and best practice.

The inquiry has certainly engaged the community: it has received a record number of submissions. The Legal and Social Issues Committee typically receives a couple of dozen submissions to any of its inquiries, occasionally even sixty or eighty. In contrast, the inquiry on end-of-life decision making has received more than one thousand (1,017) submissions.

Posted on Thursday 17th September 2015 at 6:06am

On 16^th September 2015, the Victorian Director of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL), Dan Flynn, appeared as a witness to the Victorian Parliament’s end of life choices inquiry being conducted by the Legal and Social Issues Committee. He made a number of mistaken statements, but what was most worrisome was the revelation of the ACL’s real agenda: to wind back patient rights more than a quarter century.

• Out of touch
• Out of date
• Wrong about United Nations
• Wrong about Belgium’s law and practice
• Confused about advance care directives

Posted on Thursday 23rd July 2015 at 1:22am

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews reports that he doesn’t support voluntary euthanasia “at this stage” (The Age, 21 Jun 2015), and that his objections are not based on his Catholic faith. I think it is fair to take him at his word given his historical record in facilitating conversation and reform around values-based issues such as abortion. But his current thinking on assisted dying is indefensible as I explain.