O'Connor Damien: Death with Dignity Bill — First Reading 
O'Connor Damien: Death with Dignity Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7485] 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister for Racing) 
: 
 I did not come to the House to speak on this bill but I am going to take the opportunity to do that given that I am here and that I feel quite strongly about it. I firstly acknowledge the integrity and the intent of this bill from Mr Peter Brown someone who in my view has respect in this House from all parties. He has put this bill forward through personal beliefs—for what he believes are good intentions. I stand up as someone who has stated publicly that I oppose the bill. I oppose it on a couple of basically simple assumptions I guess. 
I will go back to the first one and that is that Parliament provides a very complex process to give us comprehensive complicated but hopefully consistent law that does everything we can to protect life—human life animal life and vegetable life through conservation measures. Parliament spends a lot of time debating and arguing to preserve life in all its forms. I cannot understand that we can as humans make a judgment on when someone else should terminate that life. We do so for animals and we do so for vegetables but when it comes to human beings I think we thankfully appreciate that that is a call that is very very hard to make. 
While Mr Brown is putting up a proposal that says we are allowing self-determination for when one should end his or her life in the end the ending of someone’s life—for the most part just about every time—will depend upon assistance or judgment or influence by other people. We have different experiences in our lives—that is why we have different opinions on things. I am just a simple farmer. I have had a lot to do with death and euthanising animals. If one spends enough time around a farm one appreciates that even in the lowest moments of an animal’s life there is somehow some inner strength an inner determination that drives animals to live that drives beings to live. If members have tried to destroy perhaps even the life of a plant sometimes they would be amazed— 
Stephen Franks 
: A possum! 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: —a possum—at the resilience of the plant but especially of the animal to want to live to remain alive. But there is something that I cannot quite understand. While as a farmer I have had different experiences in life I was at one time working in a mine when unfortunately someone thought it wise to end his own life by pouring petrol over himself. I came along about half a minute after that horrible event. A person had put out the fire but we had in front of us a person who was dying and we were doing our best to try to keep that person alive. I will remember every detail until the day I die and I am sure many of us can share an experience like that. The inner being of that person was something that lived right until the final moment making noises groaning wanting to live wanting to express some inner feeling about wanting to remain a being. 
There are many people who suffer and like many people we have seen those around us suffer with cancer and go through different forms of treatment. Some people through the action of doctors take chemotherapy and are pushed to the limits of life to kill the unwanted cells and then brought back to life through other drugs it is hoped allowing just the life of the good cells and allowing the destructive cancer cells to be destroyed once and for all. 
Through all those processes people go through highs and lows and go through different forms of suffering to be at a stage in their own lives where perhaps given the choice they might choose to end their own lives. Perhaps given the choice relatives might think it best that those people no longer live.