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 Thursday 12th October 2017 at 1:50am

I challenge the latest religious right commentators opposing Victoria’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill to skip the flip-flopping and engage constructively.

They’re at it again. This time it’s the religious right’s latest ‘think tank’ front group, the impressively-named Institute for Civil Society. Sounds grand, doesn’t it?

But if you look into their lot in life, it’s to protect ‘religious freedoms.’ By that, they mean the right to lawfully discriminate against others of whom they disapprove, while at the same time arguing that they not be discriminated against.

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 3:36am

Last year, the Victorian Parliament's Legal and Social Issues Committee concluded an extensive investigation into end of life choices, publishing a report of over 400 pages recommending improvements to palliative care and for assisted dying. Catholic-backed Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees' Association (‘shoppies’ union) Labor member of the Victorian Parliament Mr Daniel Mulino furnished his own minority report, opposing the majority recommendation for assisted dying law reform. That’s entirely his right. However, his report contains multiple, serious cases of misinformation. He must withdraw his report.

Daniel Mulino, Labor parliamentary member for the Victorian Region of Eastern Victoria,¹ and a member of the Catholic-backed ‘shoppies’ union,² was a member of the Legal and Social Issues Committee that thoroughly investigated end of life decision making and produced a 400+ page report in 2016 making recommendations for law reform and regulation.

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 Thursday 22nd June 2017 at 1:05am

The Catholic Church in Australia is reeling from revelations at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, of a shocking number of cases that have occurred under its ‘pastoral umbrella.’ Yet it presumes to tell the rest of us about the hypothetical moral dangers of assisted dying laws for ‘the vulnerable.’

To add insult to injury, it flip-flops on its stance.

Never mind that the argument is contradicted by evidence

The Church’s favourite argument — already contradicted by scholarly analysis that curiously seems to be of no interest to the Church — is this: if people are given the choice of assisted dying, they will feel compelled to choose it, coerced by doctors, greedy relatives or others; subtly or otherwise.

Posted on Tuesday 13th June 2017 at 2:38am

Both the Herald Sun and The Age reported last week that religious anti-assisted dying crusaders are running a 'gloves off' campaign in Victoria.

Religious forces are gathering once again to attempt to thwart the views of the great majority of Victorians in favour of assisted dying law reform.

Posted on Wednesday 19th April 2017 at 1:39am

Last week, Mr Xavier Symons published a defence of Professor Margaret Somerville, whose arguments against assisted dying were called ‘bullshit’ by Patricia Flowers on the ABC’s Q&A program. Symons and Somerville are colleagues at the Institute for Ethics and Society at the Catholic Notre Dame University of Australia.

Mr Symons made an important point: that a law about restricted self-choice for assisted dying is in no way comparable to the Nazi Germany euthanasia (or more correctly, eugenics) programme. While Prof. Somerville agrees that such comparisons are invalid, she nevertheless often mentions Nazi Germany as a ‘question’ when debating assisted dying. That’s a bit of a fudge.

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 Thursday 9th February 2017 at 9:53pm

You only have to look to understand who is campaigning against your right to choose an assisted death in the face of intolerable and unrelievable suffering.

A case in point is a massive advertisement published in both of Melbourne’s daily newspapers: News Corp’s The Herald Sun (right-wing) and Fairfax Media’s The Age (left-wing). The ad was published in 2008 when Victorian MLC Colleen Hartland introduced the Medical Treatment (Physician Assisted Dying) Bill into the State legislature.

Posted on Friday 2nd December 2016 at 5:34pm

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) executive (policy group) recently concluded a major review of its official policy on assisted dying. The last major review was in 2007. Through a deeply flawed process the AMA executive continues to expressly disrespect the diversity of views amongst Australian doctors — a diversity confirmed by its own review — and hasn’t altered its opposition to assisted dying in any meaningful way.

Unrepresentative of Australian doctors

Posted on Thursday 3rd November 2016 at 10:05pm

In two opinion pieces recently published in the ABC’s conservative Religion & Ethics blog,^1,2 Margaret Somerville, Professor of Bioethics at Notre Dame University, railed against marriage equality law reform using reasoning that I contend fails not only appropriate standards of ethics argument but indeed her own stated standards. Here’s why.

Railing against careful and reasoned language

In two ABC opinion pieces, Margo (as she refers to herself) railed extensively against the term ‘marriage equality,’ arguing that it ought to be referred to instead as ‘same-sex marriage.’ She volunteers that the real motive for her preferred term is that in her opinion fewer people will support ‘same-sex’ marriage than will support ‘equality’ of marriage.

Posted on Wednesday 19th October 2016 at 1:12am

News Ltd columnist Jamie Walker recently reported a confected new crisis between assisted dying law reform and the Australian life insurance industry. It's a triple-sham argument as I reveal.

Last Friday, The Australian columnist Jamie Walker delivered a shrill pitch against assisted dying titled “insurers baulk at ‘suicide cover’ as SA debates euthanasia.” In it he reported that legalisation of assisted dying would “force a showdown with the $28 billion life insurance industry” and would be “disas

Posted on Saturday 24th September 2016 at 11:31pm

Against current moves to legalise assisted dying, Australian Catholic Father John George invokes Nazi Germany, resorts to ad hominem attacks to dismiss those who disagree with him, and demands that the Pope’s edicts are binding on everyone regardless of their own faith or world view.

On 24th September 2016, Journalists Greg Brown and Rick Morton published an article in The Australian, Victorian coroner credited with turning tide on euthanasia, summarising recent Australian moves to legalise assisted dy

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