Copeland Gordon: Death with Dignity Bill — First Reading 
Copeland Gordon: Death with Dignity Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7488] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 I rise to speak on the Death with Dignity Bill. I cannot say those words without my mind immediately going to the little nun from Albania who devoted her life to taking the dying from the filth and squalor of the streets of Calcutta into a specially prepared home where they were lovingly washed clothed and cared for until the last moment of their lives. As the news of her work spread throughout India and then throughout the world Mother Teresa was asked repeatedly why she had made the decision to undertake such work. Her reply was simply that it was so that those people could die with the dignity that should be accorded to all human beings. Can any of us forget her passing just a few weeks after the funeral of Princess Diana when monarchs presidents and prime ministers came to a funeral organised by the world’s second-most populated nation to honour one of the great saints of our age. 
I can say without fear of contradiction that if Mother Teresa were here tonight it would be to plead with us not to vote for this bill; for in spite of its title the truth is that this bill does not point the way towards death with dignity but to physician-assisted suicide. A similar plea would be made to us by the thousands of doctors nurses and helpers who make up the worldwide hospice movement. They too have devoted their lives to the palliative ongoing medical care of those whose conditions mean that they are approaching the end of their lives. I know that to be true for I have received many letters from them couched in the most moving terms asking me to vote against this bill. 
Indeed this bill is a contradiction of all that they stand for. They tell me that they employ their expertise in ensuring that people are able to die with dignity. They tell me of the enormous progress they have made in controlling pain and ask us to give our support to their attempts to kill the pain—not by deliberate action to kill the patient. 
History will also be our judge tonight. Three and a half millennia have passed since this world received the gift of the Ten Commandments through the Jews. One of those commandments states simply: “You shall not kill.” This bill breaks that commandment. Two and a half millennia have passed since the emergence of the Hippocratic oath which specifically states: “I will use no medicine to kill my patients even if requested to do so.” This bill breaks that oath. 
The importance of the Hippocratic oath cannot be overstated. It was the gift of the Greeks to civilisation. It set the physician aside as a person whose sole vocation was to heal and never to kill. Prior to that what in those days were called witchdoctors had carried within them the power to heal and to dispatch so that they were regarded with a mixture of awe and fear but never with trust. The Hippocratic oath changed all that and it is fundamental to the trust and esteem in which we hold the medical profession today. That trust will be breached and lost for ever should this bill become law. People and particularly the elderly will once again begin to fear the doctor. 
This bill is dressed up in attractive and emotional clothes. The reality however is set out in clause 4 which authorises a medical practitioner to “assist” a person to end his or her life by “the administration of a substance to the patient”—in other words a lethal injection or similar. 
The New Zealand Medical Association strongly opposes this bill. According to both Paul Rishworth co-author of the book  
The New Zealand Bill of Rights 
 and to the Attorney-General Margaret Wilson this bill is contrary to the right not to be deprived of life which is enshrined in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. On behalf of all those I have mentioned and of the many other thousands of New Zealanders of like mind I too now tonight enter my plea in this Parliament for members to vote against this bill.