Williamson Maurice: Death with Dignity Bill — First Reading 
Williamson Maurice: Death with Dignity Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:610;Page:7492] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (NZ National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I think I am probably the longest serving of all the MPs here tonight other than you Mr Speaker and I have been through a number of conscience votes. I have always been on the libertarian side and I will be again tonight by supporting this bill. But I have some questions that I want answered which are to do with whether this legislation can be abused. If it can be how do we tighten it to make sure that it cannot be because my rights finish at the end of my nose and do not go further into other people’s purview. 
I think that the concept of somebody wanting to terminate his or her own life because of incurable agony and the pain and suffering that is going to go on for a limited time before he or she finally dies is a perfectly legitimate issue over which an individual should have a right to make a decision. But I think there are some issues about both overt and even covert pressures that may come on a person. 
There are clearly the covert issues of elderly people who are suffering and in pain going towards the end of their lives and worrying about whether they are eating up the assets of their children to whom they would like to leave some inheritance. Even though the kids may not be placing that pressure on them it may finally get to them and they might say: “Look I know I could hang on for some time. I can bear the pain and the morphine is keeping me OK but I’m going to whittle away my kids’ inheritance to a point where it’s nothing so I’m best to trundle off.” I would like to know that we can make sure that that process could not happen. I would also like to make sure that the overt pressure that can be put on somebody—with people saying things like “Come on it’s time you got out of here because you’re just suffering and we would like to get the inheritance.” or whatever—could not happen. 
But having said all that I believe that this is a question about the principle of an individual’s right to choose. I have been involved with some family members who have been in excruciating pain and who have had all the palliative care one could possibly offer. They have been doped to the eyeballs with morphine and other things and still only weeks from death they have been just screaming out for it to be ended. Members should think about that and think about it for themselves. I am happy to put my hand up right now for that right to choose if I were in that situation of excruciating pain knowing there was an end coming. That is not what Dr Lynda Scott was talking about—she spoke about someone who might have a mental illness that could be cured—because that is not right. I agree with her on that. But people who are going to die—and a lot of those cases are very clearly identifiable—and who will last for only a certain amount of time should have a right to say what they want. 
So I will be voting for the first reading of this bill and then spending quite a lot of time listening to the debate as I think every member of this House should. This is bigger than any of the conscience votes that I have faced before—selling wine in supermarkets homosexual law reform or anything else. This is much bigger. This is something that goes right to the heart of what we as humans believe we really are and what makes a society decent or not. As long as I am convinced through a fairly elongated process and then through a referendum that there are the necessary protections and safeguards in the bill and that we watch it carefully as it goes through I will probably be persuaded to support it right to the end. I will not give that commitment yet; I will certainly listen to the debate. 
One thing I want to raise with members of this Parliament tonight is the fact that this sort of stuff goes on now and if members do not think that it does they have to be living in cloud cuckoo land. If members talk quietly and privately to some medical practitioners those practitioners will say that they have allowed people to just slip away or even assisted that in a non-acknowledged “nod nod wink wink” way because it was the time that the person who was going through simply excruciating agony and pain wanted to go. I would want to know that that option existed for every human being. I can tell members that my mum and dad who are still alive and in their 80s have said that that is what they would want if they ever got to a position where they were in shocking agony and pain—and what a ghastly decision it would be for an individual to make. What a shockingly ghastly decision that would be! But if in the end the proper processes were there—with medical practitioners making the right interventions—and if we had put the necessary safeguards in place there is one fundamental freedom that we should always protect for an individual. It is the right to make that final decision. I will be voting for this first reading.