Victoria’s Killing Machine
There are many times when it is very good advice not to believe what a politician tells you. And when a politician tries to tell you that he is offering you the ‘safest euthanasia bill in the world,’ then you know they are lying through their teeth. There is no such thing – it is an oxymoron. A bill to legalise the killing of people is never safe – nor can it be.
This is what we find with the new killing bill which has just been introduced in Victoria. The Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2017 is the misnamed pro-death bill. This is not about assisted dying – that is what is known as palliative care. This is about deliberately bumping people off.
The 126-page bill and the 41-page Explanatory Memorandum can be viewed here: http://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/domino/Web_Notes/LDMS/PubPDocs.nsf/ee665e366dcb6cb0ca256da400837f6b/d162e1f2fcc3f7c3ca2581a1007a8903!OpenDocument.
Premier Dan Andrews has claimed: ‘This is the most cautious, the safest, scheme for assisted dying anywhere in the world.’ Baloney, There is no such thing. Everywhere euthanasia has been legalised, the so-called safeguards have been blown out of the water, and very real slippery slopes are quickly entered into.
Every bill like this is said to be fully safe, but all these bills are like a slice of Swiss cheese: riddled with holes that a truck could drive through. In this case there are supposed to be numerous strict safeguards, but they are not worth the ink they are printed on. Consider just one very small portion of the bill.
Part 2—Criteria for access to voluntary assisted dying
9 Eligibility criteria for access to voluntary assisted dying
(d) the person must be diagnosed with a disease, illness or medical condition that—
(i) is incurable; and
(ii) is advanced, progressive and will cause death; and
(iii) is expected to cause death within weeks or months, not exceeding 12 months; and
(iv) is causing suffering to the person that cannot be relieved in a manner that the person considers tolerable.
-As I document in my 2016 book The Challenge of Euthanasia, cases considered to be incurable quite often are not.
-How exactly are we to understand terms like “advanced”?
-Up to a year to cause death? Wow, big trucks can be driven through that one as well.
-This will have to be an exceedingly subjective understanding of what is “tolerable”.
The whole bill is like this! It is so vague and ill-defined that once again, anything goes. The simple truth is, you cannot build safeguards into a killing bill. Safety is already absent from the very beginning. People will be put at risk, and the thing will just blow out as all the other similar bills have done.
Three past presidents of AMA Victoria — Dr Stephen Parnis, Dr Mark Yates and Dr Mukesh Haikerwal – have recently come out warning us of the dangers here. As Dr Parnis said: “The answer lies in better end-of-life care for the dying, not the provision of a lethal medication which cannot be made safe, despite the so-called safeguards.”
He continued:
Experience tells us, from other parts of the world, that when you are dying, you are frail, you are vulnerable. The proposed legislation is meant to have a number of safeguards to ensure that there is no coercion, that people do this of their own free will and that they get the best possible care. But having studied this carefully, it’s my opinion and that of my colleagues [Dr Haikerwal and Dr Yates] that there are too many places where this can be misused, where people cannot be offered the sort of assessment and care that they fully deserve. When it comes down to it, if you provide the right palliative care urgently, effectively and confidently, you don’t have to have the sorts of deaths that proponents of this legislation are suggesting you can’t avoid.
And a major concern is that the Andrews’ government will try to rush this bill through without proper debate and community consultation, especially while the homosexual marriage debate is now taking everyone’s attention. Sneaking it in under the cover of darkness would be par for the course for the Andrews’ Labor government.
Given that I am now interstate with a heap of speaking engagements, I cannot wade through the 200 pages of this bill to do it proper justice. So stay tuned – I hope to get to that in the near future. Suffice it to say this is a dangerous bill put out by a dangerous politician.
Once again ordinary Victorians are being held to ransom by the most radical secular left jurisdiction in the nation. Andrews and Co seem to never be satisfied with all the radical agendas they promote, be it open slather on abortion, wholesale assaults on our children through the fiendish “safe Schools” programs, or now this killing bill.
It is OK to say no to all these hardcore agendas. We don’t need them and we don’t want them.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-19/ama-presidents-pressure-victorian-mps-to-reject-euthanasia/8957800
[822 words]
Try to stop another killing machine at the opposite end of the spectrum:
http://www.citizengo.org/en/lf/83766-un-right-life-does-not-mean-right-abortion-birth
“Self-deception” is obviously ‘alive & well’, & seemingly a ‘growth industry’, at least in Political circles. ‘Tis amazing the omnipotence that makes ignorant citizens omniscience when elected to Government!
The only safe euthanasia bill is the bill that outlaws euthanasia.
And on a side note I always find it interesting that the pro-death crowd – abortionists and euthanasia folk don’t seem to support capital punishment. Why the difference? Why do only the innocent merit killing?
Yep, Daniel Andrews has a lot to answer for. The Andrews’ Trifecta is apparently his latest. Here he blatantly offers up ‘The Killing Bill’ as a fitting partner to his Safe Schools and Late Term Abortion bills. Does this man have no conscience? I am appalled that someone like him has been chosen to lead our State. He seems to me to be unfit to lead anything, let alone heed the sound advice of others. And even his less controversial decisions have large holes in them.
Today’s ALP is radically different from the largely working class entity of Jack Lang’s and Ben Chifley’s heyday. Today someone like Ben Chifley, a railway engine driver, would not even get pre-selection as a Labor candidate for election to Parliament.
Antenatal infanticide is heralded by the ALP elite as an expression of women’s liberty, a bastion of female reproductive health. Voluntary Assisted Dying inexorably becomes integral to Labor’s vision for sustainable public health delivery.
The words, “God is dead and we must replace Him” dominate Labor’s political culture. Inevitably, people share the irresistible urge to celebrate His wake with human sacrifices – human sacrifices re-badged as a quintessential 21st-Century reincarnation of “Compassion”.
Death, it seems, is no longer “the last enemy”, but a compassionate, “natural” friend, ready to assist in humanity’s ongoing quest for self-empowerment – a pursuit of happiness at any and every price.
Your comments are better than anything I could ever write JohnWigg but the ALP has one redeeming feature in my view; Julia Gillard. She is, I believe, responsible for the Royal Commission into sexual abuse of children, and therefore, by default, the possible reformation or ultimate extinction of the Catholic church. Am I saying too much?
After going through the death of my wife from breast cancer I can vouch for the fact that this legislation is completely and absolutely unnecessary.
Two things I learned from a wise friend:–
Euthanasia relies on a falsified legal document, the death certificate, which will falsely record the cause of death as the patient’s terminal illness. The true cause of death, the lethal drug(s) and the doctor who administer them, will be hidden in the patient’s medical records.
Euthanasia is a convenient excuse to introduce legal killing. Euthanasia isn’t based on the level of pain or suffering. Society wouldn’t accept euthanasia for a woman in labour, or a car crash victim, for example.
There is some merit in B.T. Walters’ remarks on the Royal Commission: As St Peter himself reminds us, judgement begins at the house of God (I Peter 4:17).
That said, the awful things uncovered by the Commission have only served to put churches in general “on the back foot” when it comes to answering the “chin music” served up by the Rainbow Flag’s opening bowlers.
The “social evolution” of marriage is, sadly, not a glowing story of rising towards light and reason from the murky depths of some primordial slime. Rather it is, biblically speaking, a tragic tale of Paradise Lost and the resulting descent of men and women into relationships which have been too often fraught with interpersonal conflict, exploitation and a failure of rightful steadfast love and faithfulness to those closest to us. The true Light amid our darkness is the the Crucified, who died to redeem His bride.
The narrative behind much of what passes for an apologia for love these days is, sadly, more akin to the violent, uninhibited ethos of the ancient Graeco-Roman myths and cultic orgies of Bacchus than it is to the Good News of Jesus of Nazareth.
Help out this effort:
http://www.noeuthanasia.org.au/sign_the_pledge_say_no_to_euthanasia