Kathy Mark: Politicians should be bold in support of right-to-die law

Dr Philip Nitschke.

Eighteen years ago this month, the Northern Territory became the first place in the world to legalise voluntary euthanasia. For Australian advocates of the right to die, the triumph was shortlived, with the law struck down five months later by John Howard's government.

There have been dozens of attempts since to emulate the NT, the latest being a bill before federal Parliament which would permit terminally ill patients to be given a lethal drug, on the approval of two doctors and a psychiatrist.

The bill, sponsored by Greens Senator Richard Di Natale, has unleashed the familiar arguments against assisted suicide, including the sanctity of life, the potential compromising of medical ethics and the risk of elderly and disabled people being pressured to end their lives.

There's no doubt that this is a moral and political minefield, and one which Australia is not alone in attempting to navigate. In the UK, a right to die bill is before the House of Lords. In France, there is bitter debate following the acquittal last month of a doctor who gave lethal injections to seven terminally ill patients.

In Australia, the unacceptable face of voluntary euthanasia - for many - is Dr Philip Nitschke, a high-profile campaigner facing suspension from medical practice over the bizarre case of 45-year-old Nigel Brayley, who killed himself in May after attending one of Nitschke's workshops.

Nitschke argued this week that Brayley - who was being investigated over the suspected murder of his wife in 2011 and the disappearance of his then girlfriend in 2005 - was determined to die, and had already ordered lethal drugs from China.

Nitschke remains a controversial figure who probably obstructs rather than advances the chances of legislative reform. More pertinent for politicians considering Di Natale's bill are opinion polls indicating that 80 per cent of Australians support the right to a doctor-assisted suicide for the terminally ill. Hard data, moreover, suggest that some of the main arguments against it are unfounded.

In the Netherlands, which legalised so-called "mercy killings" in 2002, they account for fewer than 2 per cent of deaths, according to an authoritative 2012 study. And more than two-thirds of those requesting euthanasia are turned down because they fail to meet the very stringent conditions. Rather than "opening the floodgates" to large numbers of such deaths, or creating a "slippery slope" of a decreasing regard for a patient's welfare or wishes, the new law has enabled those whose "suffering is unbearable with no prospect of improvement" to die with dignity and at a time of their choosing. Australian politicians should, for once, be bold, and heed the words of South Africa's former Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who wrote that "people should die a decent death ... I revere the sanctity of life, but not at any cost."