After waiting 27 years for a Restoring Territory Rights Bill to return their right to re-legislate voluntary assisted dying, Northern Territorians are furious the Country-Liberal Party has moved to delay action.
Justine Davis, Independent MP for Johnston, moved a motion in the NT Legislative Assembly on May 14 to request Lia Finocchiaro’s government adopt the 22 recommendations of the 2024 .
“This is not a theoretical debate; this is not just about politics,” Davis said. “This is about real people, real families and real suffering. It’s about Territorians who are asking us, pleading with us, to give them back a basic right — the right to die with dignity on their own terms.”
Finocchiaro had previously said that the suffering of the terminally ill and the wishes of 73% of Territorians to restore VAD was “not a priority” for her government.
However, it seems that providing resources to delay VAD is. The same day Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby announced an amendment asking the to undertake yet another inquiry into the independent inquiry report, to be delivered by the end of September. The committee is comprised of three CLP MPs, one Green and one Labor.
While the increasingly isolated Australian Christian Lobby gloated in the Northern Territory News, advocates of VAD condemned the delay.
Rare eye cancer sufferer and Darwin local Gavin Perry told NT News he would “go blind and suffer a horrible death” and that VAD should be available for “when your luck runs out”. “If this present Chief Minister and the Cabinet put their heads in the sand and don’t let this law pass by saying it’s not important, or it’s not their priority, then they are gutless,” Gavin said.
Even the NT News editorial described the CLP “blow hardy”, “timid” and “too cautious” on anything outside their “law and order bubble”.
“If the CLP was interested in representing people and not playing politics it would scrap its own parliamentary review and adopt those recommendations,” the NT News said.
Sue Shearer, CEO of Council of The Ageing, she hopes the committee listens to the 85% of the Territorians already consulted about VAD in 2023 and 2024.
“It appears the wheel is being reinvented with a committee made up of politicians being asked to duplicate the work already completed by an Expert Panel with backgrounds in social justice, law, medicine, psychiatry and palliative medicine,” Shearer said.
Davis said the committee’s narrow terms of reference will be a positive step towards developing a bill. “I am proud to say that in response to my motion advocating for VAD in the NT, the government has now chosen to move forward and take action that reflects the overwhelming will of the people,” she said.