Independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich says his voluntary assisted dying bill is likely to pass the first vote. The lower house debate so far has had 39 speeches supporting the bill and 25 opposing it.
I am healthy and not quite ready for death but that is irrelevant. My time will come soon and the manner of my exit should be my business.
Assisted dying legislation takes one kind of death and aims to make it easier. But it also opens the door to new kinds of suffering and abuse,unintended but not unforeseeable.
Premier Dominic Perrottet is entitled to oppose the assisted dying bill before the NSW Parliament. What he is not allowed to do is misrepresent the plight of those who want it.
The bill before the NSW Parliament is meticulous,but it is flawed in a way that I am not sure can be fixed.
NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet says the legacy of this term of Parliament will be to “open a door that no one can close” if voluntary assisted dying passes.
In a signal he expects MPs to be respectful regardless of differing views,Mr Perrottet will take the unorthodox step of being the first government speaker to respond to the bill.
Former minister Andrew Constance and lobby groups warn that delaying a vote on voluntary assisted dying could see it become an issue in the upcoming byelections.
Almost 500 people have used Victoria’s assisted dying laws since they were introduced,but the system is being plagued by multiple challenges.
In sentencing,the New Zealand High Court judge considered the pressure the mother was under and the pain she suffered.
Dr Syme pushed for voluntary assisted dying after an epiphany in 1974 when he was unable to relieve the pain of a patient with cancer of the spine and was haunted by her screams.