Terminally ill Queenslanders will be able to end their lives at a time of their choosing from early next year, with parliament in the final stages of legalising voluntary assisted dying.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill was passed by 61 of the state’s 93 MPs in a conscience vote in Queensland’s single legislative chamber on Thursday.
Thirty MPs voted against the bill and one abstained. LNP member for Surfers Paradise John-Paul Langbroek missed the vote after being stranded by border closures.
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Parliament will vote on Deputy Opposition Leader David Janetzki’s 54 proposed amendments later on Thursday.
The laws allow people suffering a disease, illness or medical condition that is advanced, progressive and terminal to access to voluntary-assisted dying (VAD).
Their condition must be expected to cause death within a year, they must have decision-making capacity, and proceed without coercion.
The scheme will be operating from January 2023, meaning Queensland will become the fifth jurisdiction in Australia to legalise euthanasia.
Voluntary-assisted dying is legal in Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania.
Deputy Premier Steven Miles said the proposed laws won’t make people’s deaths less tragic, but it will ease their pain and suffering.
“For me, I do not know if the loved ones I have seen suffer at the end of their lives would have wanted access to voluntary assisted dying,” he said on Tuesday.
“I would like them to have known they had a choice.”
Most Labor MPs, the two Greens MPs and independent Sandy Bolton support the VAD bill, while most Liberal National Party MPs, three Katter’s Australian Party MPs and One Nation MP Stephen Andrew oppose it.
LNP leader David Crisafulli and his deputy David Janetzki oppose the bill on principle, but submitted 54 amendments, which they said would improve safeguards for conscientious objectors and reporting processes.
Emotional debate
Crisafulli, along with other LNP MPs, said more funding was needed for palliative care across the state to give patients a true choice.
“While my heart hurts for people facing great pain and terminal illness, I cannot assist them to die via flawed legislation,” he said.
“I cannot support something that offers the assistance of the state to terminate their life, the same state that does not give them options of specialist palliative care within the same time frame.
“I will not be supporting this bill.”
In an emotional parliamentary debate, Labor MPs Linus Power, Bart Mellish and Joe Kelly will also cross the floor.
Kelly, a qualified nurse, said voting for assisted dying was against his principles.
“It is my real professional view that we can provide dignified death when we provide good palliative care,” he told parliament on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, at least eight LNP MPs said they would vote in support of the bill, stating their strong belief in individual freedom and agency.
Burdekin MP Dale Last, a former police officer, said his experience attending suicides, particularly those of terminally ill people, had influenced his decision.
“Think about the impact on loved ones, on emergency service personnel, and those people who may have witnessed the event. You can appreciate the difference having that choice of voluntary assisted dying could have made,” the LNP MP said on Wednesday.
The scheme will operate from January 2023, meaning Queensland will became the fifth jurisdiction in Australia to legalise euthanasia.
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