Lightweight politicians have written a lightweight report on euthanasia for Tasmanian voters.
Tasmanians are once again gearing up for a debate over euthanasia. Labor Premier Lara Giddings and her Greens Deputy Nick McKim released a report yesterday arguing that euthanasia and assisted suicide are compassionate responses for "patients who are dying in prolonged suffering".
After a failed attempt in 2009, they hope that a revised private member's bill will pass before the end of 2013.
By a cruel coincidence, a professor at the University of Tasmania, Natasha Cica, published an article about her state on the same day. It ran under a headline asking "Does Tasmania need an intervention?". In other words, does the prolonged suffering of Tasmania justify a compassionate response by the Federal Government?
More to the point, perhaps, is whether Tasmania is suffering because it has incompetent leaders. If Giddings and McKim govern Tasmania with the same provincial outlook which characterises their euthanasia report, their state is in deep trouble. Well, actually, we already know that it's in deep trouble. So the real question is: have politicians who are incompetent at their day jobs written a competent report on their hobby horse?
The answer is no. If you sent these guys to New York to negotiate a bond issue, they'd probably come back with the Brooklyn Bridge.
Their 108-page report may look comprehensive, but scratch the surface and its confident assertions fall apart. Three failures leap out: underestimating the vulnerability of the elderly, ignoring Tasmania's small population and lack of in-depth research.
Since he was disputing an article (in the same journal, mind you!) by another Tasmanian academic, Margaret Otlowski, who was a key source for this report, surely Giddings and McKim should have taken his article into account. They didn't. The term "elder abuse" is not even mentioned in the report.
But it is clearly an issue which is pertinent to the Tasmanian debate. A 2010 report from the Tasmanian Department of Health and Human Services admits that "No data indicates how widespread abuse of older people is" but it estimates that there would be between 2,600 and 4,300 cases in the state, based on overseas figures.
Why didn't Giddings and McKim look into this? Is it because they feared drawing attention to Tasmania's dismal record in coping with other types of abuse? According to Natashi Cica, "Rates of child abuse … are a national disgrace – the number of proven cases of child abuse or neglect in Tasmania in 2010-11 was an astonishing 56% higher than the national average, most cases involving children aged under five." Seriously, can a state struggling with this horror cope with euthanasia?
Even for Giddings and McKim, Tasmania's small population poses a problem for the safe regulation of euthanasia. Two doctors are supposed to review and approve a person's request. But they are also supposed to be independent. How exactly will that work in a state of 500,000 people where everyone knows everyone else? As Natasha Cica points out, "when abuse manifests in this small, tight and 'sticky' community, it can be unusually visible, intense and damaging to those on the receiving end".
What is to stop a handful of doctors from becoming death specialists who rubberstamp every request for euthanasia? In fact, Dr Philip Nitschke, the notorious euthanasia activist, has already said that he would like to set up a "mobile medically assisted suicide clinic" in Hobart, the state's capital.
The dynamic duo describe these as "thorough reviews". What they fail to mention is that the first two were discredited private initiatives stacked with supporters of euthanasia. The third comes from a different legal system and the fourth is merely a judicial opinion in a case which is still under appeal.
They also ignored last November's referendum in Massachusetts on legalising assisted suicide. It was rejected by voters in a politically progressive state which has the best hospitals and best universities in the world. It was opposed by the Massachusetts Medical Society, America's oldest state medical society.