A Right That Stops at the Edge of Town

Aug 17

Parliament has blocked telehealth for voluntary assisted dying, again

Every Australian state has now passed voluntary assisted dying laws. Parliaments debated them at length, communities argued them through, and the result is a settled national position: a person who is dying, and who meets a strict set of criteria, may ask for help to end their suffering.

‍But there is a catch that has nothing to do with any of those state debates. A Commonwealth law drafted long before anyone imagined a video consultation with a specialist makes it a crime to use a "carriage service" to counsel or incite suicide. In 2023, in Carr v Attorney-General (Cth), the Federal Court confirmed what many doctors had feared: the word "suicide" in that law covers voluntary assisted dying. A phone call, a video appointment, an email or a text message about VAD can expose a practitioner to penalties running into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

‍The practical effect is simple and cruel. A woman with motor neurone disease in a country town, who can no longer travel, cannot have the conversation. A man in his final weeks in a regional hospital cannot speak to the one practitioner in his state willing and qualified to help. The right exists on paper. Whether he can use it depends on where he happens to live and how well he can travel.

‍What happened on 11 August

As Michelle Grattan reported in The Conversation, the Western Australian independent Kate Chaney moved on 11 August to bring on her private member's bill, which would have amended the criminal law so that a telehealth consultation about VAD no longer counted as advice on suicide.

Chaney told parliament the change was supported by the Australian Medical Association, the Law Council, VAD regulatory bodies, twenty health organisations, and state attorneys-general and health ministers. Seconding her, Monique Ryan, a paediatric neurologist before she entered politics, told the chamber there was "no good reason for delay".

There was also the small matter of Labor's own policy. At its national conference last month, the ALP resolved that Labor would remove the bar on telehealth as part of lawful access to voluntary assisted dying, while maintaining appropriate clinical safeguards. It was the only contested decision at the conference, and it went the reformers' way.

Health Minister Mark Butler nonetheless told parliament the safeguards were not adequate, pointing to what he called a "quite mixed" experience with telehealth and to new business models he did not consider clinically appropriate. Chaney's response was pointed. She suspected he was talking about cannabis prescribing, "where there is a lot of money to be made", and noted that VAD practitioners operate under extensive checks and balances and that "there's no money in it for a start". ‍

Butler's position also sits awkwardly with his own record. In 2021 he attacked the Morrison government for sitting on its hands while state VAD laws were thwarted by Commonwealth communications law. In 2022 he said discussions were under way and the government was looking at ways to move forward.

The government and the opposition then combined to quash the motion, 74 votes to 12. Ten crossbenchers joined Chaney and Ryan. Because the vote was procedural rather than substantive, every Labor member was bound, so the conscience vote the party's own conference had called for never happened.

Why this matters to Humanists

Humanists support voluntary assisted dying because we think compassion and personal autonomy are better guides to end-of-life policy than doctrine. A person facing the end of their life is the one best placed to weigh what they can bear. Our role, collectively, is to make sure they have accurate information, competent care, and a real choice.

This particular fight is also a secularism issue. The Conversation reports that some within Labor attribute the Prime Minister's resistance to his personal religious convictions. We take no view on anyone's private faith. We do take a firm view that public health policy should be settled by evidence, professional judgment and the expressed will of the parliaments that passed these laws, not by the private beliefs of whoever happens to hold office.

And there is a plainer point. A law that grants a right but blocks the only practical means of exercising it is not a safeguard. It is a barrier, and it falls hardest on people who are rural, frail, poor or alone. As independent Senator David Pocock told the Senate, this is an opportunity to give people the dignity they deserve.

‍What happens next

The fight moves to the Senate. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young introduced the Equal Access to Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill on 13 August, arguing that no Australian should be denied compassionate end-of-life care because of where they live.

We will be watching closely, and we will keep making the case. If you would like to help, you can read our full policy on eligibility, telehealth, advance directives and dementia in our position statement on Voluntary Assisted Dying, and you can add your name to the Hem's Law petition and follow our advocacy on our VAD campaign page.