24 June 2021
Voluntary Assisted Dying has passed its final hurdle and will become law.
State Parliament this morning ratified the VAD Bill, making South Australia the fourth state to legalise Voluntary Assisted Dying (after Victoria, Western Australia and Tasmania).
The Bill, put forward by Labor MPs Kyam Maher and Susan Close, will now head to the Governor’s office for royal assent.
This is the 17th time a VAD Bill has been introduced in this state in the past 26 years, with the latest Bill receiving overwhelming backing in the Lower House earlier this month.
Patients in South Australia may be able to access voluntary assisted dying as soon as by the end of this year, with the Premier saying he was hopeful the new legislation would be brought in by that time.
Amendments to the Bill include allowing private hospitals and individual practitioners to conscientiously object to the administering of VAD and refer patients requesting VAD to other health providers.
The Bill requires eligible patients to be aged over 18 and to have lived in SA for at least a year. Their condition must be terminal, with death likely within six months, and causing unbearable suffering with no prospect of relief. The patient must have their cognitive competency verified by two independent medical practitioners. A doctor cannot raise the VAD option with a patient.
The ANMF (SA Branch), with the overwhelming support of our members, has been an active campaigner for voluntary assisted dying for over five years.
However, we also acknowledge and respect that there are differing views in our profession. Our membership comes from diverse cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds, and our members hold a range of ethical views on the subject of voluntary assisted dying. Nurses, midwives and assistants in nursing have the right to hold their own opinion and for their opinion to be respected.
In May we co-hosted a Candles for Compassion Vigil in support of VAD on the steps of Parliament House. We also published a full-page open letter in The Advertiser in November calling on our state politicians to pass the Bill when it is introduced in Parliament.
To quote our letter: The impact on nurses and carers at the bedside of the terminally ill is all too raw. We are the ones who hear their cries for an end to the suffering, powerless to act, heartbreaking as it is to witness.
Our great palliative care can only do so much - it is NOT the solution. Sadly, it cannot deal with everyone’s pain.
As nurses and carers who have experienced first-hand the plight and the cries of the terminally ill and their loved ones, we ask that our politicians, the very people elected to reflect the will of the people, honour the wishes of the overwhelming majority – and, most importantly, those who continue to languish in agony and despair, deprived of their right to die with dignity.
Some state MPs have acknowledged in Parliament how the powerful testimony of nurses who care for dying patients had helped move them to vote yes.
Image: VAD supporters, media personality Lainie Anderson, ANMF (SA Branch) Director, Operations & Strategy Rob Bonner, Frances Combe, Liz Habermann and Anne Bunning, flanked by VAD Bill proponents Kyam Maher and Susan Close, celebrate SA becoming the fourth state to legalise VAD.