There are 5.2 million people in Queensland. They are people of different races, different religions (or no religion), different political views, different educational achievements, professional skills, and different socio-economic status. But, we Queenslanders have one important thing in common: one day, each and every one of us 5.2 million people, is going to die.
And, of those Queenslanders who are eligible to vote, four out of every five want the right to choose the time and manner of their death should they be afflicted with a terminal illness or neuro-degenerative disease.
That right will be granted to Queenslanders this week, but not without a fight; a battle against misinformation and propaganda, and against our own political representatives who wilfully chose to ignore the expert evidence presented to them and voted against the clearly expressed views of the majority of their constituents.
I followed the debate in the Queensland parliament closely, and found myself thinking, “Who are these politicians raising ‘concerns’ about voluntary assisted dying that have been repeatedly debunked?”
I’m a professional researcher with modest resources. But, over the last 10 years I’ve investigated almost every claim about “slippery slopes” and “vulnerable groups” and hundreds of “horror stories” about people being euthanised “against their will.” I’ve found 99.99 per cent of them to be completely unfounded and 99.99 per cent of them emanating from religious sources.
Religious lobbyists would be very wrong to suggest that we, similarly, reject their arguments out of hand. We don’t. We look at each and every claim, statistic, and case study. We chase down academic papers, medical and government reports, police and judicial inquiries, and first-hand accounts by the people who have used VAD, their families and their doctors.
We don’t just “google” sites that agree with us. We look at each and every claim and ask, “Could this be true?” And we set out, honestly, and without preconception, to establish the truth.
Why? Because advocates of VAD have absolutely no interest in putting vulnerable people at risk, or allowing doctors to maliciously murder patients against their will, or any of the other horrible scenarios suggested in the reams of propaganda put out by religious astro-turf organisations. If there are issues, we want to know about them and address them. But, in almost every case, what we find are bodgy statistics, half-truths, stories ripped from their context, and straight out, bald-faced lies.
Nobody summarises this better than Emeritus Professor of Law, John Griffiths who said in his book Euthanasia and the Law in Europe:
“Imprecision, exaggeration, suggestion and innuendo, misinterpretation and misrepresentation, ideological ipsedixitism, and downright lying and slander (not to speak of bad manners) have taken the place of careful analysis of the problem and consideration of the Dutch evidence.”
Ipsedixisitism – don’t you love it?
And yet, the vast majority of LNP politicians (and some members of the ALP) this week, repeated this kind of propaganda as if it were true. Did they approach their jobs in good faith?
Surely politicians, who have much better resources than I, have access to the parliamentary library, to expert researchers, and to the many academic, government and judicial inquiries which have determined, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that voluntary assisted dying laws are safe and pose no threat to vulnerable groups.
OK. I accept there are a range of views about voluntary assisted dying. But politicians aren’t elected to vote on ‘views’ – they’re elected to vote on hard evidence from credible sources, and in accordance with the reasonable desires of their constituents.
The safety of VAD laws is not contested – despite what religious propaganda may ask you to believe. There should have been no politicians standing up in parliament this week raising “concerns” about the safety of the carefully drafted Queensland VAD Bill. There aren’t any legitimate concerns.
Really! This kind of legislation has been tried and tested all over the world with none of the apocalyptic results predicted (or recounted) by opponents. We know it works and the laws drafted in Australia are the most restrictive anywhere in the world.
The only legitimate objection politicians could possibly have had to the Queensland Bill is their belief that life is sacred and that suffering provides an opportunity for death-bed conversion and salvation.
The question is, is it legitimate for a politician to inflict their religious convictions on to constituents who do not share their views?
Imagine if a politician was considering whether a bridge should be built in her electorate and she held a firm view about where it should be located – perhaps somewhere convenient to where she lived. In this case, expert opinions would be sought, engineers reports ordered and town-planners consulted. Of course, there would also be a public consultation process.
Imagine if the expert reports determined that the politician’s preferred location was completely unsuitable – and that 80 per cent of her electorate wanted the bridge located at the site suggested by the experts. It would be politically judicious for the politician to put aside her personal preference (and graciously accept she was wrong).
But, if, instead, she went to parliament and dismissed the expert reports, raised “concerns” written by parties with a vested interest in locating the bridge at her preferred location, and made verifiably false allegations about the safety of the site preferred by experts, she would be in egregious breach of her ethical responsibilities.
Yet, that is exactly what happened in the Queensland parliament this week. Politicians are entrusted with representing the reasonable views of their electorate. And yet, repeatedly, we saw politicians standing up and blatantly betraying the people they were elected to represent.
It should be no surprise to anyone that the majority of those who said “No” to Queensland’s voluntary assisted dying bill were from the LNP. But this was no political objection. The vast majority of politicians who opposed the bill have firmly held, conservative, religious views which they privileged above the wants and needs of their constituents.
As politicians discussed their voting intentions this week, I did some investigation about the reasons behind those “No” votes.
Jarrod Bleijie (LNP – Kawana) said he was voting against the Bill because he worried about children accessing the life-ending medication by accident. This has never happened, ever, anywhere in the world. Mr Bleijie has made no complaints about pharmacies dispensing any number of drugs that might (conceivably) fall into the hands of children, nor of palliative care practitioners bringing potentially lethal medications into the residences of those who choose to die at home. But dig a little and you will find that Mr Bleijie is an elder of the Kawana Waters Uniting Church. He was formerly a director of Mercy Ships – a controversial Christian missionary group that grew out of the evangelical Youth With a Mission. To his credit, Mr Bleijie, is at least honest about where his alliances lie. “I am not bashful about declaring that I am a practising Christian,” he boasted in his maiden speech.
Another ‘honest’ LNP politician was Andrew Powell MP (LNP Glasshouse Mountains) who confessed what his colleagues wouldn’t:
“My vote doesn’t reflect my electorate’s views – Jesus guides the way I operate.”
Jon Krause MP (LNP – Scenic Rim) said he would vote “No” because he thinks the legislation is too “risky”. It’s clearly not. So what else explains his decision? Mr Krause didn’t disclose his family’s very close association with the Lutheran Church.
“No” voter, Tim Mander MP (LNP – Everton), who used all the debunked talking points against VAD, is a Christian and bible college graduate and formerly CEO of Scripture Union Queensland.
Jim McDonald MP (LNP – Lockyer) decided that, although 82 per cent of his constituents want the right to choose VAD, he is happy for them to die slowly, (and not necessarily without pain or suffering), under palliative sedation. This is a method by which doctors provide very strong drugs to patients, knowing they are very likely to kill them eventually, but consoling themselves that this “isn’t their intention.”
Similarly, Pat Weir (LNP – Condamine) betrayed 79 per cent of his electorate when he flagged his intent to vote “No” – and suggested, falsely, that two-thirds of his electorate supported his stance. In fact, credible polling shows that two-thirds of his electorate “strongly agree” that VAD should be legal. Mr Weir is a Catholic.
So, too, is Linus Power (ALP – Logan) who said he was concerned that VAD might be used by people who were suffering intolerably from symptoms other than pain. Pain is the most manageable end-of-life symptom – although not always manageable. End-of-life suffering occurs from a tsunami of physical and psychological symptoms which are no less distressing, whether or not pain is included. And who is Mr Power to determine whether someone’s suffering must be endured because pain may not be the major issue? It seems far more likely that it was Mr Power’s Catholic convictions about the sanctity of life – and suffering – that directed his vote.
Another “No” vote from the ALP came from Joe Kelly (ALP – Greenslopes), a graduate of Ignatius Park (Catholic) College in Townsville. Mr Kelly’s stated concern with the bill was that it puts nurses in danger of criminal conviction. This has never happened – anywhere. I imagine Mr Kelly’s objection came as quite a surprise to the more than 2,000 members of Nurses Supporting Voluntary Assisted Dying, a group run by Queensland nurse, Fiona Jacobs.
The legislation, of course, was expertly framed by the Queensland Law Reform Commission who would never have recommended legislation with that kind of glaring loophole. But, of course, a politician can’t just state baldly that he’s really uncomfortable voting against the Vatican’s Evangelium Vitae – even if that Papal encyclical means nothing at all to the vast majority of the constituents he represents.
Then there is Dan Purdie MP (LNP – Ninderry) who, coyly, referred to his school in his maiden speech without actually mentioning its name. Why? Did Mr Purdie envisage that one day he’d be required to choose between his electorate and his religion and that some snoopy researcher might find out he was a Catholic – educated at Padua (Catholic) College?
Of course, Mr Purdie didn’t ‘fess up that his objection to the Bill was religious. Instead, he simply ticked off all the Catholic propaganda talking points which have been repeatedly debunked and disproven. It’s not just misleading – it’s really lazy to accept information that accords with your preconceptions at face value, while rejecting expert evidence that shows incontrovertibly that your preconceptions are wrong. At least be honest and say, “On this issue, I’m voting with the Pope, not the people.”
I won’t belabour this further by listing every religious LNP vote. It’s not always apparent what religious affiliations politicians have, but I’d happily bet the vast majority of LNP politicians who voted against the bill either did so on religious grounds or because they were muscled by the LNP’s Christian right faction.
Is the LNP a political party or a theocratic movement? And if their aim is theocracy, why not be open about it?
Queenslanders deserve better. Queensland Catholics and other Christians deserve better! These politicians did not even represent their views. The majority of Australian Catholics and Christians support VAD and you can see that broken down by electorate in Neil Francis’ excellent statical analysis of the 2019 Vote Compass survey here. This survey asked constituents to say to what extent they agreed with the statement: “Terminally ill patients should be able to end their own lives with medical assistance.” [Scroll down to the third (main) table and click on the name of the electorate for detailed results.]
As Neil reports:
“Those supporting VAD laws include nearly four out of five Catholics (78%) as well as most Anglicans (84%) and other non-Christian faiths (82%). Among voters with no religion, there was almost universal support (95%).”
Please don’t think I’m saying religious politicians have no place in parliament. There is absolutely no reason why people of faith shouldn’t hold political office – providing they accept that decisions should be evidence-based and guided by the reasonable wishes of the majority of their constituents. Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk was raised Catholic but voted based on the evidence and the overwhelming agreement of the people of Queensland.
But, I see no difference between a politician who answers to the Vatican or some other church, and a politician with an allegiance to a foreign power, or to some shonky real estate developer. It’s true that (on this issue at least) Queensland politicians weren’t betraying their constituents for a nice little beachfront unit after they retire. But they were selling their constituents out because they fear losing the right to reside on a prime piece of real estate in the hereafter. If that is the basis on which a politician makes decisions, they are not fit for office.
Despite the religious shenanigans this week, Queensland’s VAD bill will pass – almost certainly without any of the vexatious amendments. But, I hope that when casting their votes at the next election, Queensland voters will consider the LNP’s (and some ALP members’) shameful betrayal of their constituents.
Chrys Stevenson
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