X-Message-Number: 7086
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 1996 08:18:51 -0700
From: David Brandt-Erichsen <>
Subject: Australia update

     SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
     October 29, 1996

     Pro-euthanasia forces reeling after bill defeat

     By JODIE BROUGH and HELEN PITT

     The Federal anti-euthanasia bill is certain get through the House
     of Representatives after a majority yesterday voted against
     sending it to a parliamentary committee for investigation.

     The vote, which came after a day of emotional debate, was a
     disaster for the pro-euthanasia forces, which had been hoping
     that a delay would give them time to lobby against the bill.

     It confounded the declaration by a leading pro-euthanasia Liberal
     MP, Mrs Chris Gallus, that there was "strong support" among MPs
     for a motion which would set the bill aside permanently.

     Queensland Liberal backbencher Mr Mal Brough had sought to set up
     a select committee to investigate euthanasia, arguing that the
     debate over Liberal MP Mr Kevin Andrews's private member's bill
     had been dominated by emotion.

     But his motion, which would have set up a select committee to
     report to Parliament by February 28 next year, was defeated by
     100 votes to 35.

     Speaking against the bill, Mrs Gallus said doctors were "killing
     their patients today" without supervision or regulation and
     outside the law.

     "Doctors are not God and cannot be allowed to act as if they
     were," she said.

     "If doctors are assisting death, which by their own admission
     they are, then this must be under the law."

     The vote dismayed the pro-euthanasia lobby, with the Coalition of
     Organisations for Voluntary Euthanasia (COVE) saying it was
     "absolutely appalled and disgusted".

     A COVE spokesman, Dr Robert Marr, said: "It appears politicians
     are deciding this issue on their own prejudice and are unwilling
     to examine the facts or listen to the expressed wishes of the
     vast majority of Australians, 75 per cent of whom support
     voluntary euthanasia."

     Dr Marr said COVE was still "quietly confident" that the Senate
     would reject the Andrews bill.

     The debate, confined to six speakers, opened with Mr Andrews
     giving an emotive account of watching his father die from a
     terminal illness and a young cousin being disconnected from a
     life support machine after a car accident.

     "Euthanasia legislation sends a powerful message to the
     Australian community that the vulnerable are expendable and not
     valued," Mr Andrews said. "What is so compassionate about telling
     people who feel worthless that they are better off dead?"

     Prominent Left frontbencher Mr Lindsay Tanner said the issue was
     not one between Church and State but between State and citizen.
     It was "impossible to draw safe boundaries" to State-sanctioned
     killings, he said.

     And the spectrum of anti-euthanasia opinion was much wider than
     "the Catholic Right". He said each member would in the end
     respond to "a gut level set of values", and his were not to
     authorise death in view of "human fallibility".

     It was one of the strangest debates ever seen in the House of
     Representatives, with factions split and Liberal and Labor
     enemies united in counting numbers for the same side.

     As the time approached for a vote on Mr Brough's motion, Mr
     Andrews consulted closely with Labor number-crunchers Mr Leo
     McLeay and Mr Stephen Smith.

     The Labor Left and Right faction splintered, with Mr Tanner being
     publicly berated by his Left colleague, Mr Anthony Albanese, for
     siding with "the moral minority" by speaking in support of the
     bill.

     No Coalition frontbencher supported Mr Brough's move, which was
     backed only by a few staunch Liberal pro-euthanasia members, some
     Labor sympathisers and all Independents.


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