Amato, Farlow, Martin and Donnelly say NO to Greenwich's death bill
Right to Life NSW welcomes the release of the Report of the Legislative Council Standing Committee on Law and Justice report into Alex Greenwich's death bill.
It is noted that the Committee did not recommend the bill be passed but simply that the Council "proceed to consider" the bill.
Right to Life NSW also applauds the serious criticisms made of the bill in four Dissenting statements by Lou Amato, Scott Farlow, Taylor Martin and Greg Donnelly. In particular, I note the key recommendation of Mr Donnelly that "the committee concludes that the bill is not and cannot be made safe for the citizens of New South Wales, especially the most vulnerable".
This is exactly correct. This bill cannot be made safe and puts our most vulnerable citizens in NSW at risk. It is not only bad ethics to allow doctors to kill their patients, it is also bad policy as it creates great risk of elder abuse. We should be focusing on palliative care and dealing with COVID. It is a bad bill at a bad time.
The international experience is that the assisted suicide death rates grow at 17% per year which would mean 1230 deaths in NSW by 2030 from this bill, almost 4 times the death rate from motor vehicle accidents. It will increase suicides.
Right to Life NSW produced a submission, supplementary comments and gave evidence. I thank the members of the Committee for the opportunity to make these remarks and references to our evidence in the Committee Report.
It now falls on the Legislative Council to do again what it did not that long ago – to decline to give passage to the bill in the Council.
Dr Brendan Long
Right to Life Association (NSW) Inc.
