We already have an abortion industry and Dr Nitschke now wants another death industry. No doubt some children will be rubbing their hands together hoping to bring their inheritance forward. Oh that's right all human motives are compassionate!

Greed and loopholes will always be the major problem Dr Nitschke.

weareunique,

Do you really believe that greed is not a problem with the present system? The politicians will not allow us to make up our own minds about the morality of assisted suicide when there is hopeless suffering or to decide for ourselves whether we want to have anything to do with it. Most of the posters here blame religious fundamentalists such as runner, but such a people are a small minority of the population, and there is no reason to believe that Parliament is dominated by them. If the fundamentalists are so powerful, why have they lost on virtually every other issue: property rights and votes for women, contraception and abortion, no-fault divorce, blasphemy, gambling, most types of pornography, Sunday trading, etc.?

A better explanation might be achieved by following the money. Close to half the money that is ever spent on an individual's health care is spent in the last six months of life. The powerful industries that profit from this situation have every incentive to protect their financial interests.

*If the fundamentalists are so powerful, why have they lost on virtually every other issue*

Divergence, don't be so sure. I remind you of the deal that Harradine
negotiated with Howard, to obtain his single vote, which was needed
to swing the Senate, on IIRC the sale of Telstra.

Australia stopped all funding for family planning in the third world
and I gather it is still that way.

Yabby,

No doubt the fundamentalists do weigh in on the anti-euthanasia side. The threat of excommunication can be powerful, as you said, and a fundamentalist who has the balance of power can extract a lot of concessions. However, there was a free vote on the Andrews bill. Public opinion polls had been running at 70-80% in favour of making voluntary euthanasia available, so out of curiosity, I once calculated the probability that the anti-euthanasia vote on the Andrews bill would have been as strong or stronger than it was, given a 30% probability that each individual politician was anti-euthanasia. Lets just say that it was infinitesimal. If the MPs and senators voted as they did because they were worried about the fundamentalist vote, then why haven't they supported the fundamentalist positions on other issues, such as abortion or the teaching of evolutionary theory in the schools?

Divergence, I think that it comes down to how many votes are at
stake, both for and against.

Above all, policitians want to be elected again, so they are quite
pragmatic. Now on abortion, you would have people demonstrating in
the streets and people quite likely to swing their votes over the
issue. So the votes lost would outweigh the numbers of fundamentalists.

Whilst most people support euthanasia, they commonly have other
preferences too. So they arn't yet ready to swing their vote, as
they would do with abortion.

Political parties would have established all this by polls and
formulate their policies accordingly.

But for fundies and the Catholic Church, euthanasia is a huge issue.
So any party promoting it could easily lose a few %, enough to swing
the elections.

The best way to try and get it through is a bi partisan vote but
you'll have huge campaigns by fundies and the Catholic hierarchy,
to roll it.