Victorian Kill Bill Passes in Lower House

The Australian state of Victoria has just voted to give the green light to a very worrying kill bill. The Lower House voted 47-37 to support the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2017. It must now be voted on in the Upper House of the Victorian Parliament, likely in November.

I had warned earlier about what a dangerous bill this was. Despite claims that it would be “safe,” there of course is no such thing as a safe kill bill. It certainly is not safe for those being killed, but it is not safe for the rest of society either: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2017/09/23/victorias-killing-machine/

The Dan Andrews’ Labor government rushed this bill through, knowing that the federal postal plebiscite on homosexual marriage would offer a nice distraction. A Labor government had already foisted upon Victorians one of the most liberalised abortion bills in the world back in 2008.

Now we have even more death. Why is Andrews and Co so utterly obsessed with death and killing? What is wrong with this man? What is wrong with a government that pushes death upon its population in all walks of life? This is appalling, but equally appalling were all those Liberal politicians who went along with this.

Things were quite bad a few days earlier when an attempt to shelve the bill was defeated because some renegade leftist Liberals sided with Andrews. Deputy Premier James Merlino defied Andrews and proposed a ‘Reasoned Amendment’ which would have stalled the bill:

“MPs in favour of euthanasia defeated an amendment to put the bill on ice with 47 votes to 39. Liberal frontbencher David Morris led five Coalition MPs including Roma Britnell, Brian Paynter, Louise Staley and Louise Asher to side with the Andrews government to keep the bill alive, along with two Greens MPs, and independents Suzanna Sheed and Don Nardella.”

Shame on these despicable Victorian Liberals who sided with Andrews on this. They are just as much responsible for this diabolical bill as Andrews is. And even some Labor figures – such as Merlino – have opposed this. Indeed, just a day or two before the final vote former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating made an impassioned plea on this.

He urged fellow Labor politicians to reject this kill bill, calling it “bald utopianism”. His words were as welcome as they were surprising. As one news report put it, Keating also

condemned the parlous state of geriatric and palliative care in Australia, which he said was where the real priority ought to lie. “The weakest link in the chain is palliative care,” he told Fairfax Media. Arguing against what he called “an unacceptable departure in our approach to human existence … and what it means to be human”, he said supporters of the Voluntary Assisted Dying bill being debated in the Victorian lower house ahead of a final vote on Thursday night were misguided.
The powerful intervention represents the most senior political foray into the highly contentious debate which, while more advanced in Victoria, is due to be prosecuted in other jurisdictions in coming months, including the New South Wales Parliament.
In New South Wales, both the Premier and the Opposition Leader have indicated they would vote against the move.
The comments put the former leader on a collision course with majority opinion in his party and openly at odds with Victoria’s Labor Premier, Daniel Andrews.

As he wrote in his opinion piece:

The justifications offered by the bill’s advocates – that the legal conditions are stringent or that the regime being authorised will be conservative – miss the point entirely. What matters is the core intention of the law. What matters is the ethical threshold being crossed. What matters is that under Victorian law there will be people whose lives we honour and those we believe are better off dead.
In both practical and moral terms, it is misleading to think allowing people to terminate their life is without consequence for the entire society. Too much of the Victorian debate has been about the details and conditions under which people can be terminated and too little about the golden principles that would be abandoned by our legislature.

He concluded with these words:

The issue is not how many people will choose to die under this proposed law. It is how many people may die when otherwise they wouldn’t. As Dr Gannon says it is “commonplace” for patients to tell doctors in front of their loved ones that they have no wish to be a burden on families.
Once this bill is passed the expectations of patients and families will change. The culture of dying, despite certain and intense resistance, will gradually permeate into our medical, health, social and institutional arrangements. It stands for everything a truly civil society should stand against. A change of this kind will affect our entire community not just a small number of dying patients. It is fatuous to assert that patients will not feel under pressure once this bill becomes law to nominate themselves for termination.
Opposition to this bill is not about religion. It is about the civilisational ethic that should be at the heart of our secular society. The concerns I express are shared by people of any religion or no religion. In public life it is the principles that matter. They define the norms and values of a society and in this case the principles concern our view of human life itself. It is a mistake for legislators to act on the deeply held emotional concerns of many when that involves crossing a threshold that will affect the entire society in perpetuity.

And just days ago general practitioner and former president of the Australian Medical Association Mukesh Haikerwal offered a stern warning about where this would lead. He said in part:

The VAD Bill as it stands is flawed. It only partially protects some vulnerable groups. Euthanasia proponents argue that the Bill has more safeguards than any legislation of its type in the world. The reality is that there can never be enough safeguards should this Bill be passed.
It exposes patients to the slippery slope of endless alternative outcomes. The most vulnerable and helpless would be at most risk. Doctors, too, are exposed. The Bill, with all its unclear, complex criteria, puts the very physicians that the law seeks to empower with this grim new responsibility at risk of being subject to new litigation and possible jail — for life….
Suicide in society is a major separate issue, which occurs for a number of reasons. We are addressing this in multiple ways across the nation. Promoting a different form of suicide is illogical when we strive to prove that there are better solutions than to commit suicide.

He concludes:

Universal health access and care at all ages and stages is a key right of all Australians. There should not be a class of Australians whose life is not worth living…
The Australian Medical Association’s Position Statement on assisted dying states: “The AMA believes that doctors should not be involved in interventions that have as their primary intention the ending of a person’s life. This does not include the discontinuation of treatments that are of no medical benefit to a dying patient.”
I urge Victoria’s parliamentarians to vote against this Bill. They must do the right thing by vulnerable people across the state and, ultimately, across the country.

Yet these warnings have fallen on deaf ears it seems, not only with pro-death Labor politicians, but many pro-death Liberals as well. Shame again. And plenty of amendments (one report said over 300) on a number of aspects of the bill were raised during the marathon debate, but every single one was rejected. What is wrong with these politicians?

As mentioned, we now await a vote in the Upper House. But things are not looking good. If it goes through, we will be a state known as a state of bloodshed – a state that hates life. And plenty of our politicians will have blood on their hands.

I am not sure which is worse: Labor Party figures who are fixated on death and killing, or supposed conservative politicians who go right along with all this. A pox on both their houses.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/victorias-voluntary-euthanasia-bill-survives-near-miss/news-story/9f5e5ec9674eb8c3f899a0ab5f450bc5?nk=e6a42fae312c1f11bb19b8b4db603b01-1508370021
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/dont-do-it-paul-keating-in-11th-hour-bid-to-stop-euthanasia-laws-20171019-gz4473.html
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/paul-keating-voluntary-euthanasia-is-a-threshold-moment-for-australia-and-one-we-should-not-cross-20171019-gz412h
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/most-vulnerable-would-be-exposed-by-assisted-dying-writes-mukesh-haikerwal/news-story/7b57a80284459b201ee747db4022246a

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20 Replies to “Victorian Kill Bill Passes in Lower House”

  1. Just feeling numb right now Bill…couldn’t believe the laughing & cheering at the end.

  2. It should be obvious to any clear thinker that safeguards are categorically impossible to put into a bill where the victim cannot protest a wrong result. Assurances to the contrary are worthless.

    I really do feel that the people who voted on this cherish and worship death. I can’t fathom the darkness and blindness that must reside in their hearts.

    It should be significant to every Christian that Mt 25:36 doesn’t say “I was sick and you visited me, to deliver the means by which I could kill myself.”

  3. Hi Bill. When such a senior and dare I say, venerated, Labor figure such as Paul Keating speaks out against the Voluntary Assisted Dying legislation, then we really need to sit up and take notice.
    As a GP I know how emotive discussion regarding end of life situations can become. No doubt there were many stories put forward to tug at the heart strings, and possibly a number of politicians may have changed their votes because of this.
    November 2018 seems a long way away to have the opportunity to show Daniel Andrews the door.

  4. This will have horrific repercussions without adequate checks and balances. It will mean that often an elderly or redundant relative can be bullied into taking the “green dream” because some relative or beneficiary to a will wants a quicker return or quicker access to an inheritance. This worries me. If such a bill were to specify that the patient was terminally ill and in extreme pain, like a friend’s father many years ago dying of cancer, kept alive by machines, he was blinded by tumours that had erupted in his brain, body, organs and eyes as well as chest. Normally and naturally such a person would be dead. He was only kept alive by machines. Finally he passed. People like that yes perhaps, but what of those suffering depression, dementia and the like? Who will be their advocate against the “green dream” that could be administered at the behest of eager relatives?
    Who will speak out against the abuses that will follow? Who will stop these vulnerable people being bullied into dying before they are ready? Before their time?

  5. How many people who choose to “end it all” have second thoughts – even when it’s too late to reverse matters? What does it mean to be human? How does authentic humanity impinge on the arguments for VAD? What if dying is not an “exit” from a miserable existence? What if death is actually the front door to a form of existence even more intensely real and uncompromisingly true than this life? “VE” and “VAD” are acronyms evincing a clinical, Utilitarian, materialist view of human life. Most disturbing thought of all is that the dead are never called to testify in a court of law, even when they were victims of an injustice.

  6. Daniel Andrews has certainly shown he is a wolf in a sheep’s clothing Bill. He came across as quiet and respectful of the Victorian public when he first stood for Premier. Now we have Safe schools policy, infighting in our Fire Fighters, the elastic band so tight around Christian instruction that is about too snap and break, more jails needed due to higher crime rate, pro abortion terms longer then most other states and now voluntary Euthanasia. We will become known as Victoria, the state to voluntarily kill the weak and the helpless and those without voices. 🙁

  7. Jane Byrne, the Nazis laughed and cheered over a lot of their acts. Why should others who are similarly depraved not take equal delight in their rebellion against God?

    On a side note, how will medical personnel square their obligation to do no harm with requests to murder someone? And will there be any protection for those who discriminate and refuse?

  8. In the whole epoch of our Judaeo-Christian culture, brought to these shores by, initially, the First Fleet, never has the whole concept of God and His Law been so readily relinquished, nay rebuffed, derided and denied, by so few to the detriment and death (of body, mind and soul)) of so many. Search in vain also for such so-called “liberalism” (read “true evil”) in the other religions of our multi-cultural society, and even in the Reason [simpliciter] of those who deny God. There are previous philosophical and ethical madness-es that match this VAD Bill espoused by the Victorian Parliament (vide the 2008 abortion rights act) but they all demonstrate to us and to the world that the culture of death is alive and well in the ‘hallowed’ halls of Melbourne’s never- to sink-Lower(?) House. I am torn between applauding Paul Keating’s measured tone and screaming for the ex-communication of all those of whatever party who are catholic who voted for this pernicious evil occurrence, on this day which will live forever in infamy in Victoria. One can only pray and hope that the Legislative Council does not acquiesce in this deplorable lie and that the other States do not play the domino-principle move. Congratulations to all Victoria’s politicians who today voted a resounding No! to VAD.

  9. For Victorians even more “Evil beyond any words”
    Therefore I will use God’s Holy Words -The Bible
    But he that shall sin against me, shall hurt his own soul. All that hate me love death (Proverbs 8:36)
    For the rest of us who opposed this KILL BILL
    Because you have kept my command to endure, I will also keep you from the hour of testing that is going to come on the whole world to test those who live on the earth. I am coming soon (Revelation 3:10-11)

  10. Hi Bill, it is indeed a sad day for Victoria. Hopefully, sanity will reign in the Upper House, however, I’m not holding my breath. If my understanding is correct, in countries such as The Netherlands, where Euthenasia has been legalised, funding for all aspects of Palliative Care is now severely curtailed. Will that now be the case for Victoria? Time will tell! Thanks again Bill for all of your efforts, blessings, Kel.

  11. SHAME on those treacherous Politicians who voted in this Kill Bill.
    Thank you Bill, for alerting us all to this wickedness.
    As a result, I have emailed all five of the traitor politicians who voted with Labor, plus emailed and congratulated the Deputy Premier for his opposition to the kill Bil euthanasia legislation.
    Is there any chance that the Victorian Government could be dissolved – have a new election as the Premier has overstepped his responsibility to the Victorian public. The Premier has a DUTY of CARE for ALL VICTORIANS especially the most VULNERABLE, yet he and his colleagues do not deserve to be in Parliament.

  12. Victoria is definitely the weak link in life issues today. The abortion bill is one of the worst in the world and this euthanasia bill is not far behind it. I hope that euthanasia will be quarantined in Victoria and not spread out.

  13. The surprisingly sane plea from Keating might be due his age. He’s no spring chicken, so he might be contemplating the thought of a menacing doctor holding that lethal syringe. So he should. The generation that killed it’s kids will be killed by its kids. (Yep – I stole that one)
    When you compare the folly of politicians with the advice of AMA, it seems apparent that these politicians are not really capable of tackling decisions like this. It is too complicated for their simple emotional decision making. So it looks like democracy doesn’t really work too well when idiots get elected in place of real Christians.
    And speaking of euthanasia, we are not really talking about people being kept alive on machines so much. There has always been a point where a decision must be made to give up trying to keep someone alive, and relatives are saddled with the heartbreaking decision to “turn off life support”. I know someone who is alive today because his wife refused – 15 years ago. This already happens. But euthanasia involves actively killing the patient, not turning off support. It is much earlier in the dying process. Yet I have seen dramatic turnarounds in the last few days or weeks of a dying person. While euthanasia will certainly make hospital more dangerous for old people, the main problem is that it reduces the chance of a person getting to heaven. I am certain that God designed the death process as a way of humbling us and maximising our likelihood of repenting and being saved before we die. Euthanasia kills off that stream of last minute salvations.

  14. I am not ashamed of the Good News: it is the power of God saving all who have faith – Jews first, but Greeks as well – since this is what reveals the justice of God to us: it shows how faith leads to faith, or as scripture says: The upright man finds life through faith.
        The anger of God is being revealed from heaven against all the impiety and depravity of men who keep truth imprisoned in their wickedness. For what can be known about God is perfectly plain to them since God himself has made it plain. Ever since God created the world his everlasting power and deity – however invisible – have been there for the mind to see in the things he has made. That is why such people are without excuse: they knew God and yet refused to honour him as God or to thank him; instead, they made nonsense out of logic and their empty minds were darkened. The more they called themselves philosophers, the more stupid they grew, until they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for a worthless imitation, for the image of mortal man, of birds, of quadrupeds and reptiles. That is why God left them to their filthy enjoyments and the practices with which they dishonour their own bodies, since they have given up divine truth for a lie and have worshipped and served creatures instead of the creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen!
    ROMANS 1:16-35
    PAUL

  15. Daniel Andrews: Pol Pot.

    No you won’t be allowed to kill yourself next to your favorite tree, well at least not on public or Federal land. Some places are more befitting to kill yourself or be killed at apparently such as beside lakes and beaches.

    Doctors in Victoria don’t perform abortions outside of hospitals, like in parks and reserves — or places of public accommodation. Some rest home operators, motel, hotel and resort operators, land lords and others will all have to deal with the consequences of euthanasia, suicide and killing from now on – as ambulance, police, mortuary or funeral home drivers will all be visiting your private or business residence simply because someone said enough is enough. Laws should be enacted so it is only done in hospital or in private homes.
    These matters of death can all remain behind concrete and steel, security, signage, regulations, and committees of comrades in Victorian hospitals, as they have no place in the public square. And besides, communist states and Nazi Germany operated largely in the same way, but without the laws.
    God Bless Bill.

  16. Thank you Bill for another great article. Most Victorian MP’s should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

    As for Paul Keating the Catholic, he has obviously woken up and realised at long last where things are going and of course he is to be commended for it. However, he could have done so much more when he was PM but then he had to stand up to his Labor colleagues and that would have taken a lot more courage than he had then.

    I remember vividly the debate between John Howard and Paul Keating before a general election [I can’t remember the year] when they were asked a question about abortion. John Howard fearlessly said he was categorically against it whilst Paul Keating waffled pathetically.

    The condition of Victoria as a state is also pathetic to say that so many Victorians were descended from Irish Catholics. I couldn’t help thinking when the police were escorting Cardinal Pell to the courthouse a few weeks ago what a scruffy, undisciplined lot they looked. One was chewing gum and another female officer’s hair was all over the place. Not a good look with the eyes of the world upon them!

    Anyway, they say we only get the governments and service personel we deserve.

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