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Australian Christian Lobby to continue efforts to defeat proposed euthanasia legislation

The Australian Christian Lobby will continue its efforts to defeat proposed legislation aimed at allowing euthanasia, according to Lyle Shelton, the lobby’s chief of staff.

Greens leader Bob Brown introduced a private members bill to the Federal Parliament this week that would reinstate the rights of territory governments to legalise euthanasia.

Speaking to Sight prior to the introduction of Mr Brown’s bill, Mr Shelton said defeating it would be a “top priority” of the ACL over the next few months.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has already announced that Labour MPs will be able to make a “conscience vote” on the bill and it’s expected the Coalition will follow suit.

Euthanasia has also been on the legislative agenda in several states. A bill introduced into the Western Australian parliament was knocked down on 22nd September while in South Australia – where a proposed bill was defeated just prior to the last election by one vote – a new bill is due to be debated in November.

New euthanasia bills have also been mooted for New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania – the latter two states where similar proposed legislation was defeated during the past couple of years.

The ACL has claimed pro-euthanasia advocates such as Greens Leader Bob Brown and Philip Nitschke are seeking to overturn federal legislation on the issue by pushing the debate through smaller territory parliaments and have questioned the amount of time being spent on the issue.

Speaking to Sight, Mr Shelton, meanwhile, said that the ACL has rock “solid support” from churches in their response to the issue.

“But I think what’s missing from this debate is the reality of euthanasia and that’s that once you introduce it you devalue human life; you create a hierarchy of life based on quality of life and that’s a very dangerous principal to set – in law and in medical practice. 

“And you put subtle pressure on the elderly, people who have a terminal illness or who think they might have a terminal illness or are feeling depressed to ‘do the right thing’ and to free up their hospital bed or whatever for somebody else. That’s in very crude terms but it does bring that very subtle pressure on people.”

Mr Shelton said there were also serious questions about the effectiveness of proposed safeguards on voluntary euthanasia, saying that there remained doubts that two of the people euthanised by Dr Nitschke after the Northern Territory briefly introduced euthanasia laws in the mid 1990s were terminally ill.

He said Dr Nitschke had also admitted to a Tasmanian Parliamentary Inquiry last August that he had may have breached the Northern Territory’s Rights of the Terminally Ill Act when euthanising patients but that it was a breach “motivated…by compassion”.

 The ACL has since welcomed the comments from Ms Gillard on the issue with managing director, Jim Wallace, saying that the Prime Minister was “rightly concerned” that euthanasia is open to abuse and poses a threat to vulnerable people who will feel pressure to “do the right thing”. 

Prior to the recent defeat of the Western Australian legislation, the ACL reported that more than 1200 emails voicing opposition to the proposed legislation had been sent to the state’s upper house members through their Make A Stand website.

www.acl.org.au
www.makeastand.org.au

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