This article has one glaring omission.
It is in regard to "the assertion of anti-euthanasia forces that the effectiveness of modern-day palliative methods obviates the need for legal reform."
Senator Haradine, during his successful fight to prevent civilised assistance to those in need of it during the desperate terminal phase of their lives, swung votes his way by giving an assurance that availability of palliative care services would be enhanced.
It was an assurance that he, an experienced politician, knowingly could not guarantee.
Further, during the remaining years of his tenure in parliament, he took up other causes at the expense of monitoring the assurance he had given. During those years, palliative care services were subject to bureaucratic shuffling within health matters, and provision of palliative care declined from the point of view of those in need.
Quite apart from needlessly increasing the physical and mental pain of those in need, the decline in effective service to their clients was distressing for the nurses employed to administer it.
Enforcement of their particular religious belief by one segment of society upon the whole of society is bad enoough. Resorting to dishonesty in the achievement of such enforcement is despicable. Such immorality remains unchanged from that senator's day.

As with the Australian peoples Constitution this gives the right of oneself.

This gives the person the right to have choice.

When religion comes into the mix as it always does people lose their rights and this is just communism.
It is not just liberal but labor and those that have a heavy, extreme stance on this issue.

As i see it this is my life and my doctors told me after my accident that i should be dead and yes i should have been, no it was a work accident, so now what are my choices well i am still here for a reason and that reason is the people.

It is time we fixed this so those in need can have that choice of dignity, and that i respect.

The "No's" have it all their way at the moment. A referendum on voluntary euthanasia is well overdue. Which ever way the numbers fall, the "No's" can continue down their own path and hopefully, mind their own business!

I have an old flat mate currently dying. She was operated on in the best hospital in Sydney, is sufficiently well off to access anything on offer. Still, she is in agony, having returned to hospital several times for "pain management" - Oh yeah?

She is a tall woman reduced to weighing 48 kilograms, dependant on her ailing husband for daily care.

The best we can expect is for the end to come soon, though she'll no doubt,leave this world totally bombed out on the "pain management" drug, morphine.

I wonder if the pro-lifers' God is happy to receive confused and incoherent drug addicts into his realm!

no a referendum is a waste of time

what we need is a change of government

they wouldny send this out to the people as would then destroy credibility with those right to lifers and religious organisations.

I work in a palliative care unit.

It is false dichotomy to pose that palliative care is opposed to euthanasia. It helps no-one to pursue this line.

The philosophy of palliative care as published by the Queensland and Commonwealth pall care associations and as practised where I work is neither for nor against euthanasia.

Pall care is about providing symptomatic relief, rather than curative treatment.

Patients may have varying amounts of choice (according to their medical condition, other personal factors, and access to resources) as to when they shift their thinking from treatment for cure (or remission) to treatment solely to relieve pain and other suffering, including mental anguish. Most patients can be thus assisted - but not all. Sometimes suffering cannot be palliated.

Patients vary tremendously in their attitude towards shifting their thinking from cure to symptomatic relief only. Denial, acceptance, anger, hostility, fear, regret, grief are all frequent initial responses.

It is not only pain that distresses patients. Distressing symptoms may include nausea, extreme shortness of breath, fitting, generalised anxiety, fear of judgement after death, depression, bodily disfigurement, sense of lack of control and loss of dignity.

Drugs may be administered (ideally according to the patient's wishes previously expressed) to a level that would ease pain and suffering without removing mental awareness, or to a level that would completely relieve the patient's symptoms but might leave the patient sleepy or with little conscious awareness.

If euthanasia were legal, it would not alter the purpose of palliative care - symptomative relief rather than treatment for cure. Euthanasia and palliative care are separate concepts.

Peggy says, correctly, "Euthanasia and palliative care are separate concepts."
Yes, and I find it repulsive when religious fundamentalists conflate the two - in the manner of senator Harradine.
He declared that palliative care would be guaranteed at such a high standard and ready availability as to replace any need for euthanasia.
It was a dishonest guarantee - worse, the standard of delivery, from the patients' point of view, declined during his subsequent years in the senate.
Religious protagonists of his ilk perpetuate this style of conflation. No wonder a "them and us" misconception has been built up.

Suicide is not illegal anymore. If people in their right mind want to commit suicide they may do so. The suicide's assets are no longer forfeit and their remains are treated with the same respect as anyone else's.

Suicide and attempted suicide are also, very commonly, selfish acts. We're all selfish to a greater or lesser degree so the selfish motivations of the suicide are understandable to most of us and, usually, forgivable by most of us, but that doesn't make them any less selfish.

The extreme selfishness of suicide by voluntary euthanasia is demonstrated by the desire to have another person, a doctor, be involved. Why does it have to be a doctor?

Because the person seeking euthanasia wants not just death but a particular kind of death. They don't want to kill themselves. And they don't want someone to kill them who is skilled in killing otherwise they would be agitating for serial murderers (who might enjoy the process) or abattoir workers (who probably would not) to do the job.

What they want is a fairy tale; a beautiful, appropriately lit moment in which, surrounded by weeping family members, a caring doctor will end their travails, non-messily, perhaps while their favourite piece of music is playing, blah, blah, blah. Who cares if the doctor is psychologically damaged by having participated and later struggles with his or her "regret and emotional distress at having performed euthanasia"*? They'll be dead and gone and it won't be their problem.

Or maybe that won't happen. Maybe they'll get one of those doctors who couldn't care less or, worse, one who actively gets off on watching someone die. Maybe, just before the lights go out, they will see that the person killing them is getting as much of a buzz from the process as would any Ivan Milat or Harold Shipman.

*The Practice of Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide in the United States: Adherence to Proposed Safeguards and Effects on Physicians
http://www.nightingalealliance.org/cgi-bin/home.pl?article=154

jrm - if voluntary euthanasia was legalised, the need for a doctor to assist would not be necessary to end the life of many of those you so calvinistically describe as "selfish".

Though lacking in medical knowledge, I see no reason why controlled, regulated access to lethal drugs could be not be made available to those who meet a certain stringent criteria to commit suicide. The maximum involvement of others would be to legally access those drugs on behalf of those who are incapacitated. The administering could be carried out by the patient or loved ones where they too would have prior counselling to ensure they meet certain criteria.

Of course, there would be many other factors of safety to consider for legislation, however, voluntary euthanasia or suicide is all to do with choice which the majority of Australians do not have at present - thanks to the few who believe that they and their super-natural deities are exclusively authorised to dictate to the masses!

Maybe you enjoyed saying all that,jrm. Seems like perhaps you get off on pushing your unwanted opinions down other peoples' throats, insulting and demeaning people who are at the end of their tether due to their virtually unbearable physical/mental condition, and forcing them to endure unnecessary pain and suffering against their express wishes and against the wishes of those who know and love them.

People like you make some of our serial killers seem almost humane by comparison.